


Money is the Anthem

by myrskytuuli



Category: Disney Duck Universe, Disney Ducks (Comics), The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck
Genre: F/M, Goldie is dramatic, Scrooge is excited about minerals, This fic takes duck romance way too seriously, but come on Barks did it first, but like its heavily implied, doesn't overtly mention prostitution, historical research in a fic about talking ducks, probably inaccurate gold mining, the duck-verse AU epic literally nobody asked for, what am i even doing with my life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-11
Updated: 2017-08-11
Packaged: 2018-10-30 18:09:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 55,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10882194
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/myrskytuuli/pseuds/myrskytuuli
Summary: Goldie O’Gilt fell in love at first sight at the huge golden nugget the size of an egg when she first laid eyes on it. Later it turned out that the duck that came attached to it was worth the effort too. The real surprise, the irony and twist of fate was the fact that by smashing these two frozen gold-digging hearts together, you ended up knocking forwards something good, something so pure that neither party ever expected to find it in themselves.Or, the duck comic-verse AU where Goldie and Scrooge get married in Klondike, and not many things change.





	1. Where Diamonds Grow

Ever since she was a child, people knew two things about Goldie O’Gilt.  That she was greedy, selfish, gold-loving treasure seeker, who cared more about riches than anything else, and that because of those traits she would never find true happiness. The people were only half-right, as Goldie herself would later find out. Keeping that happiness was then a different story, or maybe the true story was in finding happiness after losing it. Whatever it was, the true moral that Goldie had found from her life was that you probably shouldn’t listen to what other people say, when it comes to determining whether one’s life is satisfying or not. And of course, when people talked about a girl’s happiness in the end of the Victorian era, they were talking about a husband. One might argue against lumping the words husband and happiness as synonyms, but in the end, it didn’t matter much, as Goldie against all odds managed to find both.

The trick for it was to find a husband just as selfish, greedy and gold obsessed as she was. The real surprise, the irony and twist of fate was the fact that by smashing these two frozen gold-digging hearts together, you ended up knocking forwards something good, something so pure that neither party ever expected to find it in themselves.

Yes, Goldie O’Gilt fell in love at first sight at the huge golden nugget the size of an egg when she first laid eyes on it. Later it turned out that the duck that came attached to it was worth the effort too.

 

* * *

 

New York, the year is 1866. In the immigrant area of the great city, there is a baby being born. It is an extraordinary cold night, the wind howling and rattling the thin walls and the snowflakes sneaking their way inside the building, from all the cracks in the walls. However, the people inside have no time to notice the snowflakes, as they are too busy trying to heat warm water and find clean blankets for the baby.

It is a usual house for an immigrant family in New York, with five different families trying to make do in one small apartment.  One family shares one bed, and children run underfoot everywhere. Mostly they all get along well enough, all knowing that they can’t possibly afford to be hostile to each other, when the rest of the New York is already doing it for them all.

But if there was an immigrant that managed to mostly avoid the worst of the hostilities, it was Shannon O’Gilt. She seemed to have gift from above which made people inclined to get along well with her. Not that it was hard to get along with Shannon. Shannon was a pleasant woman, with a strikingly beautiful blond hair and always a kind word for everyone she met. She was born an optimist, and despite everything, stayed one her entire life. It could have been easy to treat her kindness as naivety, but it would have also been inaccurate. She was a poor Irish-woman in a city where she saw opulence every day, and had to accept her low wages and ostracization from the white-protestant America simply as a fact of life. She understood how the world worked, but she had also made the decision that the world would not be allowed to win by making her act as cruelly as she was treated by those around her.  

Once, when she had been young, she and her new husband had immigrated to the land of possibilities and dreams, escaping their home country ravaged by famine. The memory of that hunger of her childhood was what kept Shannon from ever complaining in her new life. She always knew that no matter how poor they were, or how loathed they were by the wealthy Americans, it could always be worse. As long as both of her children had something to eat every day, Shannon was content.

But Niall and Shannon had also learned on the first day of arriving at America, that while life could always be worse, it was not going to be easy, or even fair. When they had touched the ground on Ellis Island, Niall O’Gilt had been instantly drafted to be part of the civil war, and just like that, Shannon gained a new homeland and instantly also lost the kind and fun husband that she had had.

Shannon’s world had shattered right there and then. She spent long and lonely years working as domestic servant in a family that scorned her, waiting for Niall to return. But the husband that she had remembered, did not return. Niall did come back from the war, but he was bitter, angry and broken. If Shannon had believed that getting her husband back would fix her life, she was wrong. In reality, it only made it worse.

When Shannon became pregnant, she lost her place as a servant and had to relocate into one of the tenements for the poor in the inner city. There, amid the rats and the mould, she gave birth to her first daughter, Gilda O’Gilt. Niall worked odd jobs and sometimes bought the money back to the family, but more often drank it away. Year later, Shannon was here, delivering her second baby, while the Italian mother who shared the room with her improvised as a midwife.

When young Goldie O’Gilt was born, she did not have much to look forwards to. Born in a blizzard, in a cramped room full of the unwanted and the trotted upon, she became one of the many citizens in the city of dreams. The world around her did not note her birth in any way, because the world around her did not yet know what was to become of the youngest O’Gilt girl.

 

It was on the year 1876, when Goldie O’gilt was ten years old, and her sister Gilda was eleven, that their father died. The only reason Goldie and Gilda found themselves mourning was because, with their father’s death, their mother turned inconsolable. The girls couldn’t remember anything but the smell of whisky and the fights with mother, but Shannon could still remember the handsome young man she had married in Ireland, and mourned for the man she had lost on the Ellis Island.

With Niall gone, the only money the family had had also disappeared. Shannon couldn’t find it in herself to return to work, as she was too heartbroken and sick. Her coughing was getting louder every month, and who would ever even employ an Irish-woman with two children and questionable health.

This left the two girls with only one choice. Turn to the streets to make their own bread. Gilda, being the older one and having the luck of looking older than her real age, set her sights on the beautiful houses where the rich folks lived.

She walked from house to house, where the scent of roses and the sound of music burrowed deep into her bones and festered there, looking for a house that was in need of a maid. She was a girl to never forget her bitterness. At that age, she still truly loved her mother and sister, but there was also a part of her that despised the fact that she had been born into such misfortunate family. She learned soon to introduce herself as Gilda Gilt, and deep in her heart she wondered if maybe somehow she could one day cut away her family and float into freedom amongst these beautiful houses, with their roses and pianos. Eventually one of those houses opened up for Gilda, and she became the scullery maid, leaving her bed with her mother in exchange for the servant’s quarters in the new house.

Goldie on the other hand started looking for work where small scrubby things could find work: on the streets. Newsies were everywhere, small boys and girls with their stack of newspapers and armed with their bright voices. Goldie found that she had a voice that carried far and wide, and soon she too had a stack of newspapers in her hands, and a street where she would work, be it hail or sunshine.

It was the time of empires, time of self-made men and great dreams. It was a time of revolutions, industrial, economical, and social. It was a time where millionaire could buy a newspaper from a small and dirty girl with bright voice in New York, then board a ship that would take him over the Atlantic, get their boots scrubbed by a young boy in Glasgow, and return back home, full of satisfaction for the world and life. It was a time that created people with a steadfast belief that almost anything was possible, and people with never-ending hunger for more, for more everything.

 

Selling newspapers did not only gain Goldie her meagre pay, it also filled her head full of dreams of the exotic places and interesting people that the papers talked of. During the slow nights Goldie slowly taught herself to read, a skill very rare for a girl of her social standing and age. Luckily Goldie was a girl graced with great intelligence, if maybe not the strictest of morals, an attribute that during her life stayed as her greatest tool for survival and success.

But moral character did not come to her as cleverness did. For Goldie, there was never a moment of choice, or change, where she would have realized that she had shifted from honesty to dishonesty. There were only wallets in reach, and warm food on the corner of the stands. The realization that she was now a thief came only after her thievery had become a habit. After the realization, she shrugged and went on with her life. Life did not treat her fairly, so she saw no reason why she should treat the world fairly. It was a very different outlook to life than what her mother had, but Goldie never saw an issue with it, as long as mother did not know.

Their ragtag family finally broke fully apart in 1880, when Goldie was fourteen years old. It was When Shannon’s coughs started to bring up blood to her beak, and finally the only place for her to be was the New York Infirmary for Indigent Women and Children. There she coughed and bled and wasted away and the doctors could do nothing but shake their heads and offer kind words for the ragged daughter that would carry her meagre pay to the hospital with her, asking if it would help any.

Through it all, Gilda could not be found, or as Goldie suspected, she did not want to be found. Gilda was becoming more and more of a disappearing memory for Goldie, who was starting to forget what her sister sounded like, or what she looked like.  

Gilda was not there when Shannon died and for that Goldie could never forgive her. She was their mother, the one who had tried her best in a world that had made their father give up, and she had always done her best for her children. Goldie was capable of many petty feelings, but never against her mother. Goldie held Shannon’s hand through the night as she grew weaker, until the hand finally turned cold by the early morning. Goldie still held the hand for couple hours more, until she was finally guided away, almost forcefully from the room.

She sat in the hospital lobby with a small wooden box and a letter, the only things now left of her mother in this world, now her legal possessions.

Inside the wooden box were one decorative hair comb, something that Shannon had worn when she had been younger in Ireland, and a golden ring. The ring had been a given to Shannon by Niall on the day they got engaged, and even through all of the hardships, Shannon had not been able to sell it. Goldie had mixed feelings of the ring, because while she understood that some things were worth more than their monetary value, she also couldn’t help but feel bitter that mother had clung to it, rather than selling it and buying medicine for herself.

The letter was short and written with a shaking hand and it instructed Goldie to sell the ring and the comb, so that she would not need to go hungry. Goldie folded the letter neatly and placed it inside the wooden box with the two other items and resolutely decided to not sell either of them. Gaining maybe a trace of understanding for her mother’s choice to keep them.

One of the doctors came to wake Goldie from her trance, as she just sat on the hospital lobby, clutching the box.

“I’m sorry for your loss.” She said and probably even meant it. She seemed like the type. As Goldie didn’t answer, the doctor (please call me Emily) sat beside her. “What are you going to do now?” she asked, and Goldie appreciated how she wasn’t trying to console her further.

“I will go back to work, I guess.”

“You sell papers, isn’t that right?”

“Yes.”

“You know, you won’t be able to support yourself forever like that. Newsies don’t have futures as newsies.”

Goldie knew that. “I know.”

“We have a school here at the hospital. For girls who want to study medicine. We also fund charity for poor girls like you. You could apply for grant so you could attend one of the schools for young girls. That is where your future could be. Afterwards you could come here. You could live here, study here, and even work here in the future. It would be a good steady job, as a nurse or maybe even as a doctor.”

Goldie heard the words like through a fog. She couldn’t muster up any kind of emotional response to them, just nodded.

“You don’t have to answer right away. Take your time. Go out for a walk and then sleep some. Think it through. You know where to find me. Just ask for Dr. Blackwell, if you decide to accept my help.” Then Dr. Blackwell rose and presumably went back to her important duties. Goldie sat for a while longer, then stood up and went for that doctor prescribed walk.

As she walked, New York was bathed in golden sunlight that illuminated both the beautiful and the ugly. The Parisian hats in shop windows and the dead animals left to rot at the side of the road.

She ended up by the Brooklyn Bridge, sitting down and contemplating at everything and nothing in particular. Her accepting the offer from Emily Blackwell seemed inevitable, even if the idea strangled at her innards with a promise of being eternally stuck watching the ladies with their jewels and freedoms jealously from the bedside of the sick and dying.

Unknown to her, the world, fate, or maybe just a random change was working to give Goldie another option, one that only the flighty and dangerous girls would ever even contemplate, but an option nevertheless.

 

“Quelle jolie fille! Look how she completes the scene, this little petit ange in the golden sunlight. I feel like I must faint, so pleased are my eyes!”

The voice belonged to a woman, a sonorous voice inflected with heavy French accent. It took a moment for Goldie to realise that the voice was talking about her. Looking up, Goldie could see that the woman behind the voice was extremely beautiful, with dark curls and captivating dark eyes.

“Ma’m.” Goldie said as she could think of nothing else to say. The woman in front of her was being followed by a gathering of well-dressed gentlemen, and members of the press with their cameras and notebooks held ready.     

“And what sweet voice you ‘ave mon cherie. Ah, the beauty of youth! You make me weep! Oh, but there is a shadow on your face, I can see. Beauty and suffering bound together as zey always are! You are like the face of this city. Dressed in filth but with ‘idden power beyond the surface. the power to take the looker’s breathe away.”

“Are you all right ma’m?” Goldie responded to the passionate outburst with a not so small hint of scepticism.

“Mon ange. I am never just all right, I am an actress. I am either marvellous or tragic.” This was said with voice much lower than previously, and much closer to Goldie’s face. There was a new glint in the woman’s eyes that studied Goldie now so close.

 

And that was how Goldie O’Gilt met a real actress for the first time. A Parisian dame that had just arrived to New York to start off her American tour. Goldie did not know this at the time, but the arrival of this famous beauty and thespian was one of the most awaited dates in the higher circles of the American society. It was not surprising, as Goldie would later learn, because this woman was a genius at her work. Not only was she captivating at the stage, she was also an act to behold off the stage. She made the world her stage.

 

But then and there Goldie only saw a woman with too much money and not enough sense.

“But where is your family petit ange? Or did you come by yourself looking for adventure? I remember what it was like being your age.”

“Dead.” Goldie answered, hoping to rattle the woman who didn’t look entirely of this world.

“Oui, ‘ow tragic. I might faint! ‘Ere, take this.”  The woman dropped a handful of coins into Goldie’s hand. Cameras flashed and the woman turned around to give her most charming smile to her entourage.

Leaning closer again the actress spoke once more with her low voice meant to be heard only by her and Goldie. “Girl, you ‘ave a face that men left and right would fall for. Don’t waste it. Angels like you belong on the stage, not hiding on these scrubby streets.”

Then, just like she had appeared, she was gone; leading her flock of gentlemen and press with her, and Goldie could do nothing but stare, stunned.

After she was over being stunned she found out that the surreal meeting had also managed to kick her out of the fog that had taken over her mind. Coming painfully aware of how tired she truly was, Goldie picked herself up and headed towards home.

 

The apartment had filthy water coating the floor and there was a baby crying behind the paper-thin wall. None of that bothered Goldie in the least as she let her head hit the pillow and fell asleep right away.

Goldie was woken up by her landlord who angrily informed that as Shannon hadn’t paid her rent last and this month, Goldie had no business being in the building anymore.

So, Goldie went with one small suitcase, which now held everything that she owned in this world, and used all the money she had gotten from the actress to buy herself a breakfast in one of the coffeehouses, a luxury, but she didn’t care. Right now, she needed this one small luxury in her life to have a reason to keep on going.

Eating a better breakfast than she had tasted in years, Goldie tried to convince herself that returning to the hospital wold be a good idea. She might get a place in one of the schools with the other orphan girls, study, work, and live as steady and secure as unmarried woman possibly could.

Her moment was interrupted by someone she had honestly not expected to see ever again in her life, her sister. Gilda’s arrival by the table brought all of Goldie’s thoughts into momentarily halt.

“It’s lucky you hadn’t gone further off. When the landlord told me that you had left I thought I might never find you again. That you would do something stupid.”

“Where were you!?” Goldie spat out, ignoring her sister’s words.

Gilda sighed in a way that had always infuriated Goldie, because it always made Gilda sound utterly bored with anything Goldie was saying.

“You cannot really blame me. Nobody wants to watch their mother die.”

“Yes I can! Nobody wants to die knowing their own daughter didn’t even care either! You are just a selfish-“

“I was working. These things happen. Maid can’t just disappear for personal reasons like that. I have responsibilities. I’m not just some low scullery maid anymore. I have risen in ranks. Some of us want to aim for more esteemed life than what you have settled for.”

“I had to settle for this because I was the one paying for mother’s medicine! You say you worked so hard, but still we never saw a single cent from you!”

“Where are you planning to go now?” Gilda changed the topic of the conversation as nonchalantly as if they were talking of the weather.

“Do you even care at all? About anything?”

“I might be able to recommend you for a kitchen maid in Newton Archer’s household. You cannot stay a newsie forever, everybody knows that newspaper girls never leave the streets they just become-“

“We don’t at least become traitors to our family.”

“Did mother leave anything behind?” Gilda again jumped over Goldie’s words and started an entire new conversation instead of addressing the latter one. “She had that ring at least. Did she sell it before she went?”

“You know what Gilda. Go push your head in the river.” Goldie snatched her suitcase and rose up from her seat, starting an angry march down the street. Her last view of her sister was of her calmly helping herself to the remains of Goldie’s breakfast. Goldie couldn’t help but wonder if her sister truly was capable of real emotions at all, and if maybe her sister’s life was made easier by her cold outlook to it.

Goldie did not march to the hospital; there was a new fire in her. A willingness to at least try the more dangerous way, that had formed somewhere between anger and the burning need to leave the whole city of New York behind.

Having worked selling papers for years came with the advance of having easy access to said papers and the information they held. Grapping one from her younger co-workers (You owe me a favour from last week Willy!”) Goldie scanned the pages until she found what she was looking for.

Looking at Willy, Goldie could see the bricks starting to fall into their places. “Actually, Willy, I might ask you another favour too.” She said while holding the last coin given to her by the French actress between her fingers.

 

The front of the theatre was flocked with hopeful admirers and curious gawkers. All come to bash in the light of the shining star of Europe.

A ripple of panic travelled through the crowd as the star of the evening screamed a very attractive scream. A dirty boy had appeared from the masses of people and managed to snatch the lady’s handbag straight from her hands, then disappearing in the stunned confusion.

“Don’t just stand there idiuta! Get him!”

However, no hopeful male was able to fulfil his dream as the saviour knight, as the street boy’s flight was cut short by another small shape tackling him to the ground. After a very short struggle, the boy fled and the golden-haired girl was left standing up victorious, and holding the purse.

“Don’t worry ma’m! I saved it!” She called out with a clear and innocent voice.

“Mon Ange!” The actress in question cried out and flung herself to the younger girl, kissing both her cheeks several times and tears flowing from her eyes. “What fate that we would meet again cherie! You are such a brave petit ange to save me like this.”

“Well maybe fate agreed with you and doesn’t want me to stay in the streets forever.” Goldie sought out the dark eyes of the French actress while saying this, putting all her conviction to her voice.

A smile fluttered on the lips of the Parisian as she looked at the girl in front of her. “Well why not?” She whispered, before straightening up.

“My poor nerves. I feel like I might faint! Come with me mon ange, you will brush my hair so I may not have a nervous breakdown. Come, come!”

And like that she had taken Goldie’s hand and led her into a waiting carriage.

 

In the hotel room, where fire crackled in the fireplace and the famed thespian was sipping her wine, the actress made good on her declaration and made Goldie brush her dark hair.

“You are made of stern stuff little girl. There is greed in your eyes, it will either make you or break you.”

“I am not the type to break.”

“Time will tell. Meanwhile, do you want to follow us? I am starting my tour across America. Everybody knows that I am prone to nervous breakdowns and I could use a companion that could calm me down.”

“Will you teach me? To act?”

“I will teach you that and much more.”

Goldie’s hands stilled holding the hairbrush as the feeling of success travelled down her spine like excited fireworks.

“I will not disappoint you ma’am.”

“s'il vous plait! You must call me Sarah.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -Yes, I did indeed manage to fit not only one, but two historical figures in the first chapter. Emily Blackwell was one of the founders of the New York Infirmary for Indigent Women and Children, and the third woman in America to earn a medical degree.  
> -the other historical face is of course Sarah Bernhardt, who was actually touring America in 1880, and was especially impressed with the Brooklyn Bridge. What? it's not just Scrooge who gets to have famous mentors, okay!  
> -name of the chapter comes from the Marina and the Diamonds song, which you should all listen to.


	2. Because I Was Born to Be the Other Woman

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They say that she was born without a moral compass, and they might be right, but she was born with an inner compass of some kind that forced her to move, always keep moving, trying to find satisfaction for her restlessness.

“and that’s when Sarah said that I was the great coquette of our assembly and-“

“You are a cocky one alright. Is this supposed to impress me?”

The woman sitting before Goldie had a drawling, low voice and, a face that was already showing signs of in few years turning men away in disgust. As a maiden (as it is said, but after a stumble with one of the stage hands, no longer a virginal one) of sixteen there was nothing more terrifying that Goldie could imagine than the reality of aging, which was still far away from her life. In fairness, it must be said that Goldie was not alone in her silent disgust, as the matron of the Bird Cage ballroom felt revulsion towards any mixture of innocence and stupidity, and Goldie fell neatly in both categories.

“And what exactly is a great “co-kette” doing in Arizona all alone. They kicked you out of their fancy show?”

Goldie kept her face blank, like Miss. Bernhardt had taught her. She would not have needed to fall back to her skills of acting if the truth of the statement hadn’t hit a bit closer to home than was comfortable. There had been an understanding between Goldie and Sarah towards the end of their tour, that when the time of parting came, Goldie would have to manage by herself. Goldie didn’t exactly feel abandoned or bitter, but sometimes she imagined what it would have been like to follow Sarah to Europe. To see the stages in Paris and London.

Instead when their time of parting had come, Sarah had thrown herself on Goldie and wept, wailing that she would miss her precious petit ange. Goldie had known that she had to assure the actress that she would want to stay in her home country and thanked her profoundly of everything the actress had taught her. She knew that she could not ask if she could follow Sarah; she and the flighty actress had a silent understanding of where the melodrama ended and reality begun.

“I know how to sing, dance and act. I don’t see why you wouldn’t employ me.”

The matron of the Bird Cage lifted lazily her eyebrow. This wasn’t truly a negotiation on whether she would employ the young blonde in front of her or not. The girl was filled to the brink with attitude and the matron wanted to clip some of it away before guiding the prettiest face she had seen in years into the most infamous ballroom in the area. She would have been fool to turn away those soft Golden locks and sparkling eyes.

“Because you are a dumb little twit. That’s why.”

“I am not! I know how to read, I can do sums, I even speak a little French!”

“Well for the love of everything, don’t go telling that around. You think that the men who come here want the ballroom girls reading over their shoulders at their papers. They want to see some indecent dances and they want pretty girls to compliment them and they want to feel better than the other men. The last thing they want is for a showgirl to start correcting their letters.”

“Well I know that. But it should matter to you.”

“It doesn’t. And besides, do you even know what you are stepping yourself into. You look like the priest’s daughter who got lost in the wrong area.”

“I know; I’m going to make money with it.”

 The matron just sighed and shook her head. Girls, all these young little things that believed that the world would bow to their smile. “Well come on then. I’ll show you around and introduce you to the other girls.”

“What? You mean I’m in after all?”

 

“Oh! Mister! Don’t go telling the others, but I’ve never met anyone who could make me laugh like you do!”

The man smiled widely and pulled Goldie closer. “I know Glitter, I know. I’ve always said that there was no funnier man in the whole county!”

“In the whole state.” Goldie agreed and snuggled closer. With ease of practice her hand found its way to the glass of beer he had been drinking, and emptied the glass in the potted plant next to them. When the man again reached for his drink again, he squinted at the pint like it had betrayed him. He got over the feeling soon enough and called for the waitress.

“Bring me another one!”

“You’re going to drink without me?” Goldie pouted and waived her empty glass in her hand. The contents of said glass had all made it into the spitting bowl under the table.

“Why miss. You can drink with the best of them! Oy, waitress, bring Glitter a drink too!”

Josephina, a dark-haired, and slightly older than Goldie, duck lady, smiled and scurried off to bring more alcohol. The plant in its pot was starting to look quite yellowish, no matter that its soil was always kept very moist.

The man paid again, took a hearty gulp, and promptly fell face first into the table. Goldie could only blink in astonishment.

“I did not think that he was that drunk.”

Josephina scurried over, her face a picture of panic. Under her breath she kept up a steady litany of profanity, while she lifted the man’s face up by the dog-ear, came to the same realisation as Goldie- he truly was out cold, and then let the man’s face fall back to the table with a thunk.

Goldie recognised the emotion flickering in Josephina’s face. “What did you do?” she asked with a careless amusement of irresponsible youth that she was still blessed with.

Josephina shushed her angrily, then transformed her face to look like nothing was wrong.

“Well, I guess he couldn’t hold his liquor after all.” With a smooth swipe of her hand, she collected the glass from the flax fingers, and after a moment’s hesitation also picked up the glass that had been brought for Goldie.

“You poisoned him!” Goldie realised, and seeing the twitch on Josephina’s face, knew that she had been right. “You did! But why-?”

Josephina snatched Goldie’s elbow, and dragged the younger girl briskly away from any possible prying eyes. Goldie followed along with a morbid curiosity of someone who isn’t sure whether to be happily thrilled or slightly worried. They ended up at the supply closet, uncomfortable and losing a battle against the brooms that insisted into getting into their faces.

Pushing the cleaning appliance from her beak, Josephina confessed. “I didn’t mean to knock out him! He was throwing out money like a madman. I meant to get rid of Bob! Only, the glasses got mixed up! You cannot tell anyone Glitter! Mama will have my tail-feathers if she finds out. You cannot tell her Goldie!”

The use of Goldie’s real name made the request so much more solemn. Everybody knew that the relationship between Josephina and Bob was a difficult one. The story circled around that Bob had promised to marry Josephina at some point.

“Did you try to poison him for flirting with Rose?”

Josephina’s face went through some complicated motions.

“I don’t care who he flirts with. And I wasn’t going to poison him. Just to make him sleep for a while.”

“Because he was flirting with Rose.”

Josephina hissed like an angry cat. “You have no heart Glitter.”

“Well it seems to be smarter than falling in love with some farmer who goes out flirting with Rose.”

“I hope you choke on your sequins.”

“Whatever. But are you going to teach me how to make those knock-out drinks? If you do, I won’t tell anyone, and you can poison Bob as many times as you want in the future.”

 

When the Bird Cage finally closed its doors for good, Goldie emerged out as a woman nearing her mid-twenties. No longer a girl, but not quite yet a mature woman, she took to the road.

Modestly wealthy, she would have been able to pick a town and settle. She could have found work, or a husband, and started to root. She did neither, because she had this unexplained fear that if she would stand still she would cease to exist.

She found herself singing in small saloons around the country, until they all started to blur together. The experience was very different from Bird Cage. If Bird Gage was loud, extravagant and scandalous, singing alone in the small American towns littered along the railway tracks was oddly intimate business. The audience, most of them lonely, broken hearted men hunching over their tables, stayed attentively silent when she sung. Always there would be one that would hide his tears by storming out and disappeared to who knows where to think about the girl that Goldie reminded him off.

Goldie never stayed anywhere longer than necessary. She collected her earnings, and then hopped onto the train. In the end she ended up spending more time in the trains than in towns, while she was in her own personal migration towards destination she herself did not know. Fame, possibly. Adventure, more probably. Some kind of self-realisation, maybe. 

once, she tacked along a theatre group. It was the first time she could properly try her hand at acting, and she enjoyed it. She made her debut as one of King Lear evil daughters, was promoted to the lead role of Viola, the resourceful cross-dresser from the Twelfth Night, and finally ended her time with the theatre group by bringing to life the tragedy of Ophelia in Hamlet.

She met people along the way of course, but she never had any problems in letting them go. She didn’t belong anywhere, and at the same time she belonged everywhere. The most ecstatic she was on the stage. The most content she was during the morning hours sitting in the moving train, when the sunlight filtered through the window and landed on the notebook on her lap, illuminating the beginnings of a new song that she was writing. 

She had started to write her own songs, the music humming in her head as she tried to capture even half of what she could imagine in her mind into something that could be shared with others. Her long journeys usually leaving her with nothing else to do but try her hand at poetry.

 

It was in a small saloon, near the border of Mexico, that she was jarringly shaken from her nomadic anonymity, and reminded that she had once had a past, tangible and messy, as most expected from a lonely traveling girl like her.

“You look like a girl I was in love with.” This is how it started. A comment that Goldie had heard several times before, she always reminded people of their lost loves. It was the melancholic trill in her songs and that she too did not care for any of them, which brought about the nostalgia.  

“Really now. Must be a sad story.” Goldie answered carelessly. She was sitting on a bar stool, swinging her feet back and forth, sipping a glass of water after a long bout of singing. The man who had been reminded of his lost girl by Goldie kept staring at her, lost in memories.

“She looked just like you, only her hair was a shade darker. Gilda, the jewel of Jamaica. Spanish Town was always more magical in her presence.”

Goldie looked back at the man. Gilda? Gilda who looked just like her. There were of course coincides in the world, but…

“What happened?”

“She married my best friend. Gilda Dalloway first came to Spanish Town from Virginia with her husband, but after the man tragically died, she was left a widow with a great fortune but a broken heart. We met then, under a mango tree and promised our hearts to each other. She was so pure, so untouched by the corruption of this world despite everything she had gone through. An orphan from an old New York elite family. Married Mr. Dalloway so young, while he was so old. I’ve heard she would be even distantly related to some European aristocratic family. We all thought that she would be whisked away by her uncle, who is a count in Italy. Maybe her European family is also all dead?

But we had a connection. Me and Gilda. We met under the mango tree every night. She begged me to marry her. Begged!

And then two months later she was married to my best friend. It is a miserable tale. Miserable tale.”

It was. It was a miserable tale of a man who got dubbed by someone who had been only playing around with him, and Goldie had heard hundreds of such tales before. But this time… Could it be. Could her sister have re-invented herself so artfully, and crawled her way up to the high society that she had always dreamed off.

Eventually Goldie gathered her money and made her way to Jamaica.

 

America by no means was a cold country, but even when you had been used to the Arizona summer, Jamaica was stifling. It was also very British, after you had gotten used to the almost manic independence of the Americans. Underneath the glare of Union Jacks, the colony was trying to hang onto its dying history. Mostly this war between past and future was played out by bananas slowly conquering the dying sugar cane plantations.

But she wasn’t here to contemplate agriculture, she was here to find the mysterious Gilda Walsh, formerly Dalloway, and before that possibly O’Gilt.

She started from bars, the concentration of people’s second-hand knowledge. The trail of, I have a friend, who has a friend, who has a friend, who might know something about it, eventually led Goldie to a modest mansion overlooking an even more modest field of sugar canes.

She was greeted at the door by a servant, who clearly thought that Goldie had no business fouling up their nice lawn, but by a rule of politeness could not say any of this out loud. Faced with British passive aggressiveness, Goldie countered with American shameless perseverance, and managed to convey to the butler that she would stand there, fouling their lawn until she could meet Mrs. Walsh.

When she was ushered in to the hall, Goldie suddenly had a horrible vision of this Mrs. Walsh not being her sister at all, and that she had made an entire fool of herself. This idea became more and more concrete with every minute that she had to stand in the hall by herself. Because of this, it was almost a great surprise when the familiar shape of Gilda O’Gilt emerged from the doorway, dressed in fine gown, and eyes growing wide seeing Goldie standing there.

Goldie managed a simple, “hello.” Gilda did not.

After a spell of stunned silence, the first thing Gilda did manage to spit out was almost aggressive: “What are you doing here?”

“Well, it’s a funny story, I was in this saloon in New Mexico and happened to run into one of your old admirers-“

Gilda shushed her, then looked around like in fear that someone would pop up from behind the coat rack to listen at Goldie’s ramblings, finally sighed in defeat and motioned for Goldie to follow her.

“Let’s take this upstairs, to the drawing room. I am not having this conversation in the hallway.”

The remark, are you afraid that the servants will overhear, would not have been well received, so Goldie left it well alone and followed her up the stairs, and into a room that was desperately trying to evoke an impression of a Jane Austen novel.

She even struggled through the awkward silent wait while one of the servants brought them tea.

“So… You’ve managed quite well for yourself. A bit of a step up from a chambermaid.”

“And have you managed yourself?”

“Oh you know. I sing. I get by.”

“My husband disapproves of singing.”

“Well, it’s a good thing that he isn’t my husband then.”

“Why are you really here?”

“to see my sister. Is that quite so unbelievable. I didn’t even know that you were alive, before I saw you just now. Despite popular opinion, I do have a heart.”

Gilda’s face betrayed nothing, as she contemplated her younger sister who had so unexpectedly popped back into her life.

“Very well. I guess I can arrange you a husband given some time. I can introduce you as my cousin from Europe. Do you speak any languages?”

Goldie left out a dry bark of a laugh. “Some French, if you must know. And some Spanish. That is all beside the point, because I wasn’t planning on marrying and settling into a mansion, where I can spend my days staring at a dead plantation.”

“our plantation is doing fine. The workers are just so hard to find nowadays.” Came the icy response. It struck a chord of amusement in Goldie to see Gilda so ruffled over a few canes of sugar.

“You might try investing into bananas, sugar is a dying industry.”

“I didn’t know you had any knowledge on agriculture.”

“I don’t. But I understand how the world works. You have to follow the world; you cannot force the world to cater to your whims.”    

“Of course I can. It is what I do. I create my own reality as I please.”

The fangs had come out. This felt more comfortable. Two O’Gilts, being honestly awful people together.

“And how did you create this reality?”

“I just did. I decided to be an orphan daughter of an old New York family with roots in the European courts, and I did. My ex-husband told so to everybody in Jamaica, and my ex-husband before told him and everybody in Virginia so.”

“And what did your first husband think?”

“Well, he knew that he was lying, he just didn’t care.”

“You’ve had quite a few husbands in a quite a short time.”

“Yes, it’s tragic isn’t it. Even though I do keep marrying them quite old, so I guess I should know better.”

Goldie didn’t press.

“Are you happy at least?”

“I am quite rich now.”

“Those two are not the same thing.”

“Are they not? I’ve never met happy poor people.”

“Well I have. And more importantly I have met loads of unhappy rich people.”

“new money, most probably. They don’t know how to conduct themselves once they gain riches.”

“Are you serious! New money- Then what the hell does that make you? Aren’t you the newest money there is!?”

“I am a descendant from the European aristocracy.”

“No you’re not, you delusional scarecrow! Do you actually believe your own lies?”

“Keep your voice down! Or I will get the authorities and make sure you will be treated to an asylum somewhere.”

“I honestly don’t know why I expected anything else but contempt from you.”

“I’m just being practical.”

“By threatening to throw me into asylum?”

“Our shared blood is the only reason I haven’t already done that. I will overlook the threat to my position that your existence creates if you submit to play your part properly.”

“I don’t know if you are heartless, or just mad.”

“We aren’t inheritably anything Goldie. We all just choose to act some role in this world. Some just choose better than others. Now, do you choose to be my European cousin, or the madwoman who claims to be my sister.”

“I think I am going to choose to be gone. Gone from your life, gone from your world, gone from your delusions.”

“Why do you always have to be so difficult. We could have been a happy family. But I can’t let you leave like that. How can I be sure that you won’t cause me problems later on?”

“Because I won’t care enough to go around sabotaging your life.” Goldie hissed, sitting up from her chair and having to fight against the impulse to run, instead of making dignified exit.

“You are going to have to face the reality someday Gilda. Sugar cane plantations are never going to come back as an industry.” Was the last thing she said to her sister, from the doorway, relishing in the shadow of irritation that she managed to put on her sister’s face.

Once away from under the shadow of the old and crumbling mansion, she started to make extremely hasty retreat from the island, fear of being dragged into asylum after all nagging in the back of her mind. One could never know what was going on in the head of her sister, and how paranoid she had become on her journey to the top of society.

 

She travelled away from Jamaica in a ship taking bananas to America, passing time by playing cards with other people who had to travel cheaply and uncomfortably. In the end, she ended up cheating herself to win the game, but also became the source of amusement for the other’s, when it turned out that what she had managed to win was an old, abandoned saloon, in the middle of nowhere, Canada.

“And what am I supposed to with a saloon in- what is that? Dawson?” She exclaimed, looking at the papers in her hands with something akin to outrage. Her fellow players just laughed harder. She half a mind to just throw the papers overboard, but sense won in the end. There was a possibility that she could sell them to someone, who didn’t quite realise how worthless property up in the Canadian wilderness would be.  

Later that night she sat in the darkness, listening to the sound of waves and smelling bananas everywhere, her thoughts spinning in her head loud and tormenting.

Family. What a joke. Goldie thought, feeling cold and angry at the same time, as the last bits of altruism and good-will for the world slowly started to die from her heart. 

 

With the realisation that Goldie was reaching her thirties, came also her failed attempt on settling down. It all happened very organically, starting with a meeting with lord Thorpe, a rich and handsome gentleduck, in Dallas one beautiful summer day. He was impressed by Goldie’s linguistic and cultural knowledge, quite surprising for a dancer. Goldie on the other hand found herself weighting the request towards her to leave with him to England with more thoughtfulness than usual.

In Goldie’s defence it has to be said that she did try. For a year she did try, and if that trying did not become very apparent for Lord Thorpe himself, it was because he did not know how much worse Goldie could have been had she not tried.

Lord Richard Thorpe lived in Bath, or at least he made Goldie live in Bath, once he had managed to tempt her to return with him to England. The apartment was nice, furnished with extravagant comforts, and came with an assortment of servants that could be trusted to keep their silence. Around her was the city, ready for her to pick apart and discover.

Goldie suspected that if her childhood self, the always hungry newspaper girl, had known in which splendour her adult-self lived, and how dissatisfied she was with it, she would have been enraged. But it was what it was, and in the end it was mostly antsy boredom and idle discomfort.

Richard was never really an equation neither way in Goldie’s happiness or unhappiness. He was a boring person and Goldie had known this when he had boarded the ship taking them across the Atlantic. She had just thought that she would be able to ignore how irritated she became if Richard decided to stay with her for a longer period of time.

For Lord Thorpe had Lady Thorpe tucked away somewhere in the country side, in a family home, just like he had a mistress tucked away in an apartment in Bath. Like a clockwork, he circulated between both of them, depending on which one was getting more on his nerves. When Lady Thorpe’s attentions started to itch him the wrong way, he would take a leave to Bath in order to enjoy the company of his another more unofficial lady, the one who was prettier and wittier. But soon Goldie’s sharpness would hurt Lord Thorpe’s fragile ego and he would leave with a huff and puff to join again his dim but demure wife.

Goldie thought it all quite pathetic, which was starting to show, no matter how much she tried to curb her tongue in the company of Richard, who was after all paying her rent and expenses.

She managed the year in Bath, because it took her a year to exhaust all of the amusements that her situation had to offer to her. She read through the bookshelf, learned the roads and shops in Bath, and finally even taught herself how to play the piano that she had in the house.

All of these things were not enough to keep her from starting to get a bit mad from staying cooped up and dependant to someone else.  

When her time to leave finally arrived, she can at least say that she left with a bang.

She had spent the entire day pacing from room to room, restless. It seemed that she had reached the tether of her patience when it came to these walls. She couldn’t name one conceit reason for why it was tonight that made her restlessness worse than any other nights, but it was.

She went to the door, came back, and then went to the door again. Finally stepping into the evening air with a purpose. She needed to go out. See real people. Feel real emotions, not the dance of pretence that they had going on with Richard.

So she found a pub, and when there was no music already there, she hoped on a table and created some. Goldie was usually quite moderate and even aloof when it came to celebrations, but tonight there was so much that needed to be let out that moderation was nowhere near to be found. She had money, the entire allowance that unfailingly arrived once a month, to spare. It wasn’t her money, not really. It did not feel her money. It was money that was sent to keep her. Keep her in Bath, keep her well dressed, and keep her as a convenient escape for Richard’s dissatisfaction for his own life.

Somewhere along the way, Goldie had started to slightly envy even the maid, who got her pay check for cleaning the house, but never had to listen to Richard Thorpe’s dull poetry.

It was not easy being born so restless person. It was a curse really, Goldie reflected to herself, and threw some more money to the shell shocked bartender, who started pulling the champagnes from under the counter. It had never really been her money, so offering drinks all around did not feel even slightest bit bad.

People kept pushing in, as this was wrapping up to be an occasion that Bath would not forget in a while. A group of fiddlers had found their way in and the floor had evolved into a writhing mass of dancers. Some more light hearted girls had ascended up to the tables to continue spinning. A young man was sent to bring forth boxes of chocolate, which were then distributed around with a great cheer.

the party continued well into the morning, until it was already in the sunlight that Goldie returned to her house with a headache that would kill lesser women.

Inside, Richard Thorpe was waiting for her, looking at her in an abject horror. There was no way that he hadn’t already heard about the impromptu celebrations that had been going on in the lower town.

“Honestly, I have no good explanation.” She confessed and fell into an undignified sprawl over the sofa.

Richard’s voice was trembling with indignation, and barely restrained fury. Goldie found it slightly amusing between the bouts of pain in her head. 

“Do you have any idea what this will do to my reputation-“

“Worse than the fact that you are cheating on your wife.”

“Most gentlemen have mistresses, but most of them also have well-behaving mistresses.”

“Hmm. That’s true. I don’t think that this is going to work out any longer. I think that I’m going to return back to America.”

“Oh really? With what money. To do what? I practically own you, as all the wealth that you have, belongs to me.” There was a nasty tone to Richard’s tone, one that Goldie was very familiar with from all the nights he had spent complaining about his fellow land owners around the area.

“Hah! But I do still own a saloon in Dawson all by myself! I have the papers and everything.”

“Well in that case.” He drawled slowly. “Let me arrange for you a transportation to Dawson, and I’m sure that you will be happy to spend the rest of your life stuck penniless in the woods.”

Goldie knew what he was doing. He was trying to strong-arm Goldie into repenting. He fully believed that Goldie, after being threatened with poverty, would now fall in line. It was entirely possible that lord Thorpe saw this as an opportunity, because after this he saw a way to force Goldie to submit even more in the future. Every time she would forget to curb her tongue, Richard would threaten to send her to Canada.   

“That would be very kind of you.” Goldie smiled, and stared him straight in the eye, forcing him to blink first.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -Bird Cage Theatre was a real place in Arizona, there are lots of interesting stories of the place if you want to google it.  
> -name of the chapter come from the monologue in Lana Del Rey's song: Ride, which inspired some of the characterization for my take on young Goldie.


	3. Empty Gold

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Then, she instantly fell in love.

When Goldie laid her eyes on Dawson for the first time, which could be called a “city” only ironically, she was not impressed. How could she be? Dawson consisted of a saw and a small saloon that she now owned. The population consisted of exactly the workers of the saw, their families, and the merchant who appeared once a month to sell soap and clothes. Goldie had traveled, thrived, and worked where the press of people created endless noise and life. This silence and space was a new concept to her.

Still, she was nothing but determined to thrive in here too. She told herself that this was just a short stop to regroup herself, that she would not get stuck in the middle of the wilderness and frost for long. Behind her coy smiles, and dramatic persona, there was a practical woman who was determined to climb on top of the world, no matter how hard the climb was. The most important thing was that she had complete freedom again. Between glamour and autonomy, she would always choose freedom.  

So, what she did was: roll up her sleeves, sweep the floor, make an inventory of the goods and what she would have to buy, and opened the saloon. A steady flow of workmen stomped in always exactly two o’clock, to buy a plate of stew, and again at five o’clock to buy a pint of beer. They were good men. Very predictable, mostly silent behind their beards, but reliable customers that never caused any trouble. Goldie spent a year serving stew and beer to these men, getting used to the lull of life and for her surprise did not hate it. Later in her life, living a life so different, she would look back to that year with fistful fondness. She would have never managed to spend the rest of her life in that fashion, but for that short while it had been enjoyable. Like a holiday that people would remember with rose-tinted memories.

During that time, she would wash her clothes in the freezing river, she would collect the berries when it was fall time and she would melt snow in big buckets for bathing. She would make a fragile friendship with the workers of the saw, and even with some of their wives. She would go to sleep early and she would wake early. She didn’t bother to put on any make up and most of the days forgot to even brush her hair. It hardly mattered in here. It was boring and it was peaceful and against all odds, the noise that usually came to Goldie’s head when she was bored, stayed minimal. It was the responsibility that came with owning and running something that kept the noise down. Calculating expenses and making plans for surviving in the harsh north kept her occupied.

But none of that meant that she learned to love the quiet mundanity either. The evenings she spent beak close to her papers, doing sums and calculating how long till she could afford to move back to civilization again. She had a plan, a plan of returning to some big city as soon as possible.

 

That plan, of course, flew straight out of the window when the first prospector showed in her saloon. He bought a meal and told Goldie how he had found gold in the wilderness. The idea sent her heart pumping with fragile excitement; when the newspaper finally told the same story, the story of where the new land of hopes and dreams would be, her plan to get out of Dawson had been abandoned entirely.

It would seem, that Goldie O’Gilt wouldn’t need to go seeking for cities and life from the south after all. One would grow right here, under her webbed feet; And she would be the queen of it. After all, she had already taken the centre place in the land of the new opportunity.

only few weeks after the first lonely prospector had appeared in her saloon, Goldie could smell the beginning of a gold rush. Men started to trickle in, a feverish sheen in their eyes, a backpack full of pickaxes, and a heart full of hope. As time went on, the trickle of men grew steadier and thicker, and Goldie started to make her budget calculations with certainty of growing number of customers. She started to make plans. Plans that involved sparkly dresses and expensive jewellery. 

 

When Goldie met the most important man of her life for the first time, she thought: He is not going to last a week in here. Sure, he had come in riding a moose, and looking unbearably handsome doing so, but he had also refused a meal before heading towards the unforgiving wilderness of Yukon. Seeing it, Goldie had rolled her eyes, and wondered when they would find him freezing and starving to death up there. It was a shame that the cute ones almost always managed to also be the stupid ones.

The predictable fate of the cute but sour miner did not bother Goldie for long after he had disappeared beyond the horizon. She saw men go up there every day, and she didn’t particularly care about any of them until they showed up back in her place, bringing her gold.

And bring gold they did. As fast as they trickled into the wilderness, they also trickled back to Dawson in search of booze and company. They came back to show off, and to relish in their new-found ecstasy that finding gold had given them. It took only months for Dawson to transform from nothing to everything. Dawson was the centre of the universe for those mining in the frozen north, cold and alone. Soon the new capital city of the gold-rush became a place of interest for everyone, not only to the miners themselves. Women of ill repute settled in. Gamblers and loan sharks settled in. Thieves and charlatans settled in. Even some respectable business settled in, even if they found themselves mostly out-numbered by the unrespectable ones. Amongst all this chaos of people at their most primal, Goldie felt like home.   

 

The next time Goldie saw the man who would become the most important man of her life, she saw a potential victim. She did not at first recognise him as the same stubborn duck that she had months ago counted as a victim of the harsh nature as she flirted with him. There was only a slight déjà-vu in seeing such a handsome prospector so coldly dismiss her in passing. He passed her now greatly renovated building, that would soon become the most infamous saloon in Dawson, without a glance. She would have been more insulted if she hadn’t been so distracted by his cute whiskers.

Goldie’s important task of contemplating over the stranger’s whiskers was interrupted as Soapy Slick slid beside her and started to grumble about his failure to cheat and rob the owner of said whiskers. This made Goldie slightly intrigued.

“Oh, now I remember. The handsome boy who came in riding a moose!” She snapped her fingers and exclaimed in the middle of Soapy’s rant.

Soapy looked at her, eyes narrowed. “He is a thorn on my side. Pays his interests always on time. Doesn’t gamble, doesn’t drink, doesn’t even buy sugar as far as I am aware.”

Goldie looked at the duck, who was now arguing with the owner of the hardware store across the street, and hummed. “Scrooge, you said his name was?”

“Scrooge McDuck. Quite infamous in certain circles.”

Goldie hummed again, spending another minute admiring the view. McDuck had apparently broken down the clerk, who had thrown his hands in the air and stomped inside his store in great agitation. With any luck, poor George would be agitated enough that he would decide to loosen his nerves later by showing up in Goldie’s saloon.

“By the way.” Goldie turned her thoughts back to business. It was time to sort out her business with Soapy.

“You are aware that with the opening of the Blackjack saloon, our business relationship is going to drastically change.”

“Change?!”

“And by change, I mean it is going to disappear.”

“What?!!”

Goldie guided Soapy inside the saloon, where the workmen where busily hammering. The man looked both angry and flabbergasted. Goldie for her joy noticed that it didn’t matter to her. She could afford not to care about Soapy Slick.

“Now that I am opening a proper ballroom, I do not plan on letting anyone else keep any kind of business in my corners.” Soapy opened his mouth clearly ready to argue, but Goldie cut him off before he could even begin. “You already own rooms elsewhere, now I am telling you to pack your things from my place and relocate where you keep rest of your business.”

“You have the best location in town! Your place is already well known! This ballroom is going to be crawling with gold diggers, in here I could- “

“nothing. Because you are not staying in here! All the money made in this ballroom is going to go straight into my pockets and that is not up for discussion.”

If there was something that crowned Goldie as the queen of Dawson, it was the fact that Soapy Slick could in the end do nothing but sneer and pack his things. Her influence had in the end out-weighted Soapy’s, and the fact gave her immense pleasure.

 

The opening night of the Blackjack Saloon was everything Goldie had dreamed of. The building was packed. Men were standing shoulder to shoulder, pushing each other and elbowing each other in the guts. The drinks were being sold faster than the poor bartender could pour them. As the lights dimmed a hush fell over the crowd and when Goldie stepped to the stage, in her custom made sparkling dress, it was like spell had fallen over everyone in the room. Adoring and glazed eyes followed her every move, and when she started singing it became perfectly quiet. Never before had Goldie truly captivated her audience so perfectly. But here and now, she was the centre of the universe. A star. A goddess.

There and then she became drunk with the feeling of being something so powerful and unreachable. From up there, her customers ceased to look like fellow people, and instead started to resemble a field to be reaped. Endless stream of hands that would shower her in gold-dust. And why not? They adored her and that adoration would not be free. Nothing in this world was.

The high didn’t last forever, but traces of it stayed even after she had retired to her personal chambers and was snuggled under her covers. It had burrowed deep into her bones and settled comfortably into her heart. The next morning, she brewed a special pot of coffee and with a blinding smile she offered the cup to a miner who had come in pockets full of riches. It felt like nothing.

 

the third time Goldie saw the man who would soon become the most important man of her life, she learned to admire him. It had been a day like any other when Snakehips had stormed in, in the middle of Goldie’s examination of the cashbox.

“There has-! It is-! Soapy’s casino is down!!”

Curiosity sparkled, Goldie locked the treasury and rushed to the street with the others. Whatever she had been expecting, it had not been to see Scrooge McDuck dragging Soapy Slick’s beaten body across the muddy streets of Dawson, the wreck of the steamboat in flames visible in the distance of the Dawson’s river.

A smile tugged at Goldie’s beak. It would seem, that somebody had taken a much more direct approach to the question of how to get rid of Soapy Slick than she had done. Scrooge McDuck did not look particularly handsome in that moment. He looked dangerous and Goldie liked it. It was truly a shame that this was also the duck that had not once stepped inside her saloon and most probably never would.

After the incident McDuck disappeared quietly to his corner in the wilderness, and only thing that was left behind were the stories that grew in size and became wilder with every retelling. Goldie heard quite few versions in her saloon, and didn’t quite believe any of them, even if she almost wanted to.    

 

The fourth time Goldie saw Scrooge McDuck, their paths finally crossed.  

At first, Goldie didn’t even notice that her saloon had gotten an unexpected guest. She was working on the stage, the familiar notes of After the Ball falling easily from her beak. The audience was captivated and Goldie was riding the familiar rush of being the centre of all that attention.

Until she wasn’t. Because something was stirring up by the bar counter, something that could pry away the deserved idolisation of the audience from the Star of the North herself. Curious and affronted, she pushed her way through and hopped up on the bar counter, too see what all that fuss was about.

Then, she instantly fell in love.

It was easily the size of a goose egg, maybe even bigger, and solid gold. To Goldie it seemed like the nugget shone brighter than anything in the room, the golden sheen filling her vision and everything else turning into dull grey background.

Without barely noticing it, Goldie had lunged for the rock, feeling its heavy weight in her hands, seeing the glimmer now much closer.

“Don’t be so doggonet grabby!”

Reality rushed back, as Goldie lifted her gaze from the gold nugget and met the angry blue eyes of the rock’s owner.

oh

It seemed that the goose egg nugget did have one flaw after all, and it was that it came attached to one Scrooge McDuck.

Well, that was a flaw that could be easily fixed with a cup of “house special.”

 

The voices of the saloon always sounded muted to the private booths, like they were only echoes from another world entirely. It was of course the whole point of private booths, but at this moment the illusion had managed to work on Goldie too. McDuck looked so vulnerable unconscious, other hand still loosely holding onto the cup of coffee, face against the table and the worn furry hat fallen to the floor.

Goldie’s hand quickly went to hover over a sideburn, but stopped before her fingers could card through. She wasn’t sure where the impulse had come from, but she pulled her hand back. She felt like it would be indecent to use a gesture, that would normally be so tender, towards her victim. Scrooge McDuck might have been one of the toughest and most feared men in Klondike, but right now he was utterly at her mercies.

Focusing back to her mission, Goldie went for the man’s pockets instead, emptying them from any gold they had, especially the goose egg nugget. Whatever hesitation there had been before, holding the giant gold nugget in her hands wiped it away. One sharp whistle, and her men were already hoisting the unconscious miner up

“The same place as usual, boss?”

“Take him a bit further away. Hopefully a good long walk in the snow will encourage him to head straight back to his claim and not to try anything stupid.”

 

Decades later Goldie would cringe at the idea that she had once believed that Scrooge McDuck would just meekly return to his claim, and not fall upon her saloon like a force of nature in warpath. But it had still been when Goldie hadn’t known Scrooge, and in the time between drugging the miner and when that said miner had finally made his memorable comeback, Goldie hadn’t even once worried about the consequences of her actions. Consequences were something that usually happened to other people in Goldie’s world.

 But this time, consequences did happen to Goldie, and they happened in a form of enraged Scrooge McDuck wrecking her saloon and her customers. It would have been much more impressive and enjoyable show, if Goldie hadn’t had the sinking feeling during the whole ordeal that she was going to soon be snapped in half.

When Scrooge finally cornered her on the balcony, Goldie found entirely new appreciation to the stories that were being told about the incident at Soapy’s river boat. She also found entirely new respect for those men that had tried to follow this duck to his claim in hopes of claim jumping. It was-

It was a mad idea. It was a way to get her hands to more riches at once, than she could earn in her saloon in a year. It was the perfect opportunity.

Let’s play sourdough, she thought, and didn’t reach for the handgun, strapped to her leg, as the miner lifted her over his shoulder. Let’s play, she thought while scratching his back in the most ineffective, but theatrical way that she could.

Why are the cute ones also always the stupid ones? She thought as Scrooge McDuck guided her straight to White Agony Creek. A place where the documents to his claim where. Where the rest of his gold was. where he would be alone and defenceless against a surprise attack. A place with no witnesses.

I’ll just take everything he owns, I’m not evil, she promised herself.

You should not trust known criminals this much, she wanted to scold the foolish man walking her towards his home.  

 

“All right, about your pay. You will be under my employment for a month, and I will cut out third of your pay towards your debt, which will leave you with fifty cents a day. “

“You will be paying me? That’s not how forced labour to pay of one’s debts works cutie.”

Goldie was slouching against the wooden table, while across him Scrooge sat spine so stiff it looked painful.

“I want you to earn something with your own hands. You have no respect towards those who work honestly, and I want you to at least once in your life to think how much work goes into every grain of gold that is dug up from the earth.”

“Sweetie, I hate to burst your bubble, but nobody works honestly when getting rich. Everybody robs from somebody else, or abuses someone else, or cheats from someone else. It is how the world works.”

“I do! I have worked honest for every single penny and grain of gold that I own! I have never cheated, or abused, or robbed, not to gain a single penny!”

“I’m disappointed Scrooge. I was curious to find out what kind of a person you truly are, and it just turns out that you are a liar.”

“I am not lying!” He spat out, looking like Goldie had managed to poke him in an especially fragile spot.

“You wouldn’t have survived otherwise.” She scoffed in return.

“What? Just because you didn’t? Some of us simply work harder, work smarter, and don’t give up so easily.”

“So you think that I am both lazy and dumb. How charming.”

“I know that you are neither, and somehow you have still chosen the dishonest way.”

“Why would I want to make my life so difficult by playing it straight and narrow.”

“Because- “Now the bristling miner searched for words, looking like the whole affair was going straight to his feelings much more than Goldie deemed necessary. The whole conversation was somewhere between amusing and baffling to Goldie.

“Because you will know that you have been better, smarter and tougher than all those who had to steal and cheat. Because when you go to sleep at night, you will know that you have done the right thing.”

“Oh, no wonder you are always so angry and miserable, if your own clear self-conscience is the only pleasure you get out of life.”

Goldie would never admit it to anyone, but there was a small part of her that worried if her sharp words wouldn’t drive the other duck over the edge, and the situation might escalate into something more dangerous, but it didn’t. Scrooge breathed heavily, fingers curling around the edge of the table, and then he relaxed, a look of bitterness settling over. Goldie found that she didn’t like it when Scrooge looked so disappointed in her.

“I will not taint my family’s good name, or betray the promises I made to my parents by compromising my beliefs, just because you wish me to be more like the brutes and scum who have made Dawson into the hive of crime that it is today.” He turned around, stalking to gather his tools, passing a bucket to Goldie. “Let’s go then. We will want to use as much daylight as we can. The same routine as yesterday.”

 

The thing that made Goldie so uncomfortable in White Agony Creek was how everything in that valley was so pure. The prey trusted her unquestionably; a group deer munching on spring leaves only meters away from her as she worked, looking at her with their large dark eyes.

Sometimes she saw wolves running in the distance. They weren’t menacing sight to her anymore, now that she knew that they wouldn’t attack. There was no reason for the wolves or the bears to attack the ducks that weren’t part of their natural diet. Instead they turned up, drinking from the river, playing with their young and then disappeared back to the woods where they had come from, accepting Goldie as part of the valley as easily as the other creatures.

It made her fistful, because she knew that she was witnessing something that wouldn’t last. One-day, civilization would push hard enough to destroy the purity and peace in this valley.

Sometimes Goldie was tempted to throw rocks at the peaceful deer grazing near her, to hurt those living inside this valley, just to prove that this was not how the world worked.  She never did. She enjoyed their trust too much.    

 

It turned out that there was something that could keep the young miner from his work: the forces of nature on their cruellest. The spring-storm raging outside was strong enough to rip trees off their roots, and scare the animals into deepest pits and caves that they could possibly find.

It was a weather that even fuming Scrooge McDuck had to surrender to, angry and frustrated to be denied his right to work himself to early grave.

“Well, it seems that we will be having a stay-in day? Isn’t that a lovely thought? The two of us, locked in a small room together, what could possibly go wrong?”

Scrooge didn’t even dignify her remark with an answer, still pensively staring at the closed window boards that rattled with the wind.

“I guess we will just have to find other ways to occupy ourselves with.” Goldie continued, her beak leaning on her hand as she sat by the table, looking calculatedly bored, but in an attractive manner.

“You’re right. Hold that though.” The miserly miner turned to rummage through one of the lower drawers in the kitchenette. Goldie found herself mildly curious about what kind of turn this day would eventually take.

Scrooge joined her at the table, dropping a small basket full of stones on the table. “I’m going to teach you about minerals, and how to recognise land that might have valuable ones in it.”

It took Goldie few seconds of firm belief that the other duck was joking before she realized that of course this stubborn one-track minded workaholic was serious.

“Now this is what we call flint-stone- “Scrooge pulled a rock from the basket and laid it on the table between them. Goldie stared at it, realising that no one in Dawson would ever believe her if she told them about this. Outside the wind howled. She was still wearing her slip of a night-gown.

“Usually they can be found-“

Goldie would have found the situation much more annoying if she hadn’t noticed that if one tuned out the words, listening to the slightly accented voice wasn’t that bad. Scrooge had this way of rolling his R’s that sent tingles down Goldie’s spine. There was also something almost adorable in the way his eyes lit up when he talked about something he was passionate about. Listening to Scrooge, one could almost be convinced that searching for signs of valuable minerals from the shape of the land, was somehow exciting.

There was also the fact that the poor boy was clearly proud of his skills. It was a pride of an artist, of someone who was simply so happy for themselves, instead of the usual boastful pride meant to undermine others, that Goldie usually heard in her saloon.

I have a problem, Goldie acknowledged to herself, when she nodded encouragingly for Scrooge to continue, because she didn’t want that animated happiness to disappear from Scrooge’s face.  

 

“What are you doing up there? Taking a break? Time is gold, and we can’t afford to dawdle!”

A bucketful of freezing water being dumped all over him shut up the miner in his shaft quickly and effectively. The scolding tone of before was replaced by a shrill scream, as the cold water took him by a surprise.

A smirk that had graced Goldie’s beak fell, when the incoherent scream turned into shouted curses. She took a hasty retreat into the direction of the river, while Scrooge started to climb up from the mining shaft. She might as well be armed with another bucketful of cold water for this confrontation.

“I warn you! I am armed with cold water, and I am not afraid to use it!” She shouted, brandishing the bucket in front of her, and watched as the soaking form of Scrooge stalked closer, smile refusing to leave her face as she saw how his wet sideburns drooped sadly on his face.

“Too late. You can’t get me any wetter than I already am!”

He stalked straight up to Goldie, whose smile fell, when he got a hold of the water bucket in her hands, and forcefully wrangled it from her, dumbing all the icy water over both of them. The freezing liquid slid down her back and she couldn’t keep the shrill squeak down.

“That’s right! See how you like it!”

“Okay, okay. Truce, so we can both get dry clothes?”

“Probably a good idea.”

 

“Honestly! What would your mother say?” Goldie snapped, picking up the muddy pick-axe from the table. The table they ate on every day. Her tone had not been particularly mean, but Scrooge froze over the stove, where he had been stirring stew.

It didn’t take a genius to figure out what had rattled the other duck, and Goldie winced mentally.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t- “

“It’s okay.”

It wasn’t okay, Goldie could tell from the set of his shoulders. Scrooge seemed to be content to keep cooking in silence, but Goldie couldn’t help but pursue on, carefully of course.

“Has it been long-?”

“Do you remember the day that Soapy’s riverboat sunk?”

Goldie did some mental calculations and winced mentally again. That was- That was not long ago at all. It also shifted the way she had been thinking about the whole Soapy Slick incident, which had taken such legendary place in the collective memory of Dawson. Seeing Scrooge McDuck drag Soapy Slick, beaten black and blue, through the streets of Dawson had at the time looked like a demonstration of strength and dominance. But in truth it had been manifestation of the all too familiar grief.

“I, my mother died a long time ago, and I won’t say that it ever gets better, it doesn’t. Not really. But you will learn to manage the pain. With every year, you will learn to live with the void a little bit better.”

Scrooge did not answer, and Goldie allowed the silence to just be between them after that. He also pretended not to notice how his shoulders slightly shook as he kept stirring the pot, or how his eyes were slightly red when he finally brought their food to the table.

 

It was the silence that beckoned her to follow the impulse which had taken over her in the darkness of the night. Scrooge was already asleep amongst the logs in the wood-shack, and if you strained your hearing, you could hear his soft snores, the ones that barely differed from breathing.

Slipping out of the door was easy, the pile of cans, that were supposed to alarm them if she tried to leave during the night, had been abandoned on a day three, because of selective forgetfulness on both of their parts. Their entire cooperation was built over unsaid words, kindnesses that neither was ready to admit doing to each other, silent understanding and endless fascination towards each other that kept both of them always close to each other, like moths slowly circling towards the flame.

Outside the air was biting and the silence, without the slow crackling of a dying fire in the fireplace, was even more pointed. She had wrapped the covers from the bed around her shoulders to keep the cold air at bay. Struggling a little, she managed to climb on the roof of the cabin, one hand keeping the quilt wrapped over her. Sitting down on the precipice of the roof, she could see the milky-way stretching over the valley and the millions of stars that filled her entire field of vision, like countless diamonds. If only she were to stretch her hand, maybe she could collect them on her palm, claim them for herself.

But that wasn’t how it worked out. The world did not bow down for one person, and Glittering Goldie was a manmade star, not one of the eternal ones sitting on the sky and looking down at the world. Because in the end, she was only a small speck in the universe so much more magnificent than anything a human mind could comprehend. And wasn’t that the true privilege of living? Being able to admire, to feel awed by the world around you. Was there anything the stars could admire? Did they look down at the world in disgust? How horrible it would be, to be disappointed eternally by the world around you. To only see inferiority around you?

Under the moonlight Goldie found tranquillity that she had for her entire life believed herself incapable of. She felt a sense of belonging that had eluded her in these couple of weeks that she had stayed in this peaceful valley. A kinship with the world around her.  

unknown to her, Scrooge had woken up and creeped outside to see what were the faint noises coming from the roof. Bobcats some times walked over the cabin and if he had been alone, Scrooge would have blamed the noises to exploring night animals. But Scrooge was not alone and so he went to see.

Outside, the silhouette of Goldie against the starry sky, bathed in moonlight, took away the Scottish miner’s breath. She looked like a vision from some folktale, head thrown back and the moonlight creating a pale halo around her golden tinted hair.

Scrooge didn’t say anything in the morning, and Goldie didn’t find out that she had been observed during the night.

 

They were both elbow deep in the water of the creek, the sunlight playing in on the surface of the clear water. It was an exceptionally warm spring day, which made it possible for them to take their pans to the river for looking gold from the sands of the river. Scrooge was determined that by the end of the month, Goldie would be competent in all manners of gold-digging, including the one of the most traditional ones, washing gold from the rivers.

Goldie would not give Scrooge the satisfaction of admitting that it wasn’t always that bad. Most of the work was both physically demanding and mind-numbingly boring, but she had found that working by the river was actually almost fun. There was a rhythm to it, the sound of the running water was relaxing, and the sun warming her back compensated for the cold water prickling her hands.

“Not with that much force, if you shake the pan with that much force, the gold will fall off with the sand. Keep your wrists loose, and don’t grip the edges so hard.”

Goldie relaxed her hands, tried again, and then peered in to the bottom of her pan. She could see a slight glimmer in there. “Oh look at that!” She carefully extracted the small gold nuggets and placed them into the bucket with the ones that Scrooge had already managed to pull up.

Scrooge peered at the nuggets too, taking the other one up for inspection in his hands. “That is quite a big one. I wonder if the soil upstream would be even richer.”

“Have you ever tried there?”

“Not from beyond that bend over there.” He pointed at the bend barely visible from their place. “I have been concentrating on the gold inside the ground more.”

“hmm. Maybe this summer you should try upstream then.” Goldie almost stopped what she was doing, when she realised how domestic the two of them were being. Two weeks of snide remarks, passive aggressiveness, and explosive fights, had somehow still managed to settle them into a comfortable routine.

Goldie busied herself again with her pan. Scrooge started to outline a plan to comb the river upstream when the weather would turn more forgiving. Goldie hmmd and nodded at right places, letting Scrooge’s chatter roll over her. Somewhere the birds were singing and the first flowers were pushing up from the ground around the river.

  

 

There was a fatal flaw in her plan to walk away from the valley with the metal box containing the deed for Scrooge’s entire fortune, while said duck laid unconscious on the floor of his own cabin. It was the fact that she had somehow managed to fall in love with Scrooge during these weeks.

She looked down at the box, holding the yellowed paper in which folds she had found a lock of her own golden hair, tied neatly with a red ribbon. Somehow it was the ribbon that surprised her the most. It hadn’t come to the valley with her, so that meant that Scrooge had dug up the scrap of silk from his own possessions. How long had he gone through his chest to find fancy enough piece of cloth to tie her lock of hair with.  

Oh, you idiot, she thought. You have known this whole time how untrustworthy I am, and somehow you still weren’t prepared enough for my betrayal.

There was a battle in her mind, a conflict like she had never felt before, because on the other hand she wanted him, and on the other hand she also knew that this was a such a bad idea.

I’ll ruin him, she thought. Because he was right, he was not lying when he said that he is that honest, honourable, and fair.

Why couldn’t you keep a lock of hair from some innocent and good maid from the highlands, who you’ll marry when you return home rich and prosperous. You would be so good for some virtuous lady waiting for you in her castle.

But I want him. I want his adoration- No I want more than that. I want his company, and those domestic mornings, and to listen to him speak so enthusiastically about minerals, and I want him to trust me like he trusts no one else, and I want him to be mine.

She closed the lid of the box, and quiet as a shadow slipped back into the valley, towards the familiar cabin and the familiar miner, who was still unconscious and knew nothing of the possessive flame that he had managed to kindle in the famously frozen heart of the north.

 

And then she hated him again, because never had it crossed her mind that after everything, he might not want her. Might drive her out, while both of their skins were still tender with love-bites, might treat her as something to be bought-    

 

The girls in the saloon kept flocking around her, pestering her, suffocating her. She didn’t want them to be there, she wanted space, she wanted to be left alone and she wanted to be able to sulk in peace. The hike from White Agony to Dawson had burned away her anger, leaving only emptiness behind. Just like her hot sweat had finally cooled down and made her shiver as she had made her way down the path at breakneck speeds, wanting to get away from her feelings.

“But what happened? You were gone so long?! We were sure that you would have killed him by the first night!”

Goldie had to pause and look at Lulu, who sounded way too chipper about the subject.

“you what?”

“Just like that, a knife straight to the heart when he sleeps.” Lulu demonstrated a stabbing motion. “Or lower.”

“I wouldn’t do that.” Goldie stammered. It was the truth, she wouldn’t. Lulu just shrugged her shoulders, she didn’t seem to care one way or another. “Then what did you do?”

“Dug gold. It’s none of your business!” Goldie pushed through her employees and headed for her private chambers. “I’m sure you have better things to do, go do them!”

While the others obeyed, Glasseye caught Goldie by her door, snatching her hand and looking over her boss. “Are you alright?”

“I will be, when you let me sleep.”

“Did he hurt you?”

Goldie paused, before hissing out, “Yes.”

Glasseye looked over her boss again, eyeing her critically, before letting go of her arm. “Straight to the heart?”

“Get out!” Goldie commanded and threw the door shut with a bang.

 

Goldie had always been a careful listener. She knew that keen hearing was vital to her success in Dawson. Miners, scoundrels, thieves, cheaters, businessmen and hunters all at some point ended up visiting her saloon, and after a pint or two they all talked. They talked amongst themselves, they talked to the bartender and they talked to her. Most of that talk was not important, but every now and then Goldie would hear something that she could use later on. In a city like Dawson, the duck that knew everyone’s business was the one that made good business. Rumours and drunken admittances guided her to flirt where the money was and to hit where it hurt.

So yes, Goldie always listened, and had always listened when the miners started to share their lonely and cold misfortunes up in the frozen wilderness. The new thing was, that after spending a month in the frozen wilderness with a duck who didn’t know how to talk about anything else but minerals, Goldie was no longer an outsider to the conversation she was eavesdropping on. Having a pickaxe on her hand, Goldie hadn’t exactly appreciated the sour miner who not only had to correct her stance every other minute but at the same time insisted on keeping a speech about the soil.

But now, dressed in her glittering dress and flitting about her saloon, she suddenly realized that she knew more about mining than most of her regular customers. Old Joe never made it because he was digging in the wrong place. Onion-Jack never found anything because he still refused to dig deep enough. Murdough had a promising land, but didn’t know the signs for Gold. Without ever realising it, the king of Klondike had given her the one month, high-pressure, 1-0-1 how to mine in Yukon. An idea formed in her mind, as she in her heels and frilly dress made her way to the table.

“Hello handsomes!”

“Miss O’Gilt?!”

“I couldn’t help but overhear of your noble struggles. It must be so unfair how some just by the stroke of luck hit gold-veins and hard workers like you are struck with such misfortunes.”

“You said it miss. O’Gilt! It is a cruel world.”

“Maybe a little harmless bet would lift your spirits. You see, some time ago me and the girls had a disagreement about women’s intuition. I believe that sometimes woman’s intuition can be even sharper than men’s wisdom. Maybe we can finally test it out. I will give you gentlemen a suggestion and if you find something you will bring me half of the day’s findings. If you find nothing, I will give you handsome men drinks on the house.”

Wrapped in a silver-bell giggles Goldie gave instructions on where the drooling miners should hit their pickaxes and played it all up as a joke. The next time the miners came back, they came carrying gold, which half was given to their “beautiful lucky charm and muse with a voice of an angel” and the other half was used to buy “drinks all around.”

Well, you were good for something after all sourdough, Goldie thought to herself, and did not miss him.

 

If anyone had any opinions (and they had, in Dawson everyone had opinions about everyone else) about the month that she had been missing, they kept them to themselves. This suited Goldie just fine, because she had a bad habit of using the threat of physical injury as an incentive for people to keep those opinions far away from where she might hear them.

She also stopped drugging her customers.She couldn’t help but remember the deer of White Agony Creek, and their large trusting eyes, every time a naïve newbie walked in her saloon doors, looking so easy to rob that it physically hurt. No one made a fuss about it, as it was just a habit that she dropped, a habit that had put most people who knew her on edge anyway. It didn’t mean that she became entirely clean either, but she did sit down one night, and couldn’t help but hear Scrooge’s voice echoing in her head. I will not betray the promises I made to my parents, he had said. To his dead mother, she now also knew. This train of thought also led her to think of her own mother, dead for so many years now, but her memory still so clear. She would have been horrified to know some of the things that Goldie had done, just to get her hands on new jewels. 

I do miss him, she finally had to admit to herself, during the long nights that she spent tossing and turning in her soft sheets.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wohoo! The losers are finally together in the same chapter! While we are still in the canon-land in this chapter, the next chapter will be the one where this fic takes a turn towards the AU-land.  
> -also, if you are interested in dance hall girls and history, you should totally check out Klondike Kate. I'm pretty sure that I've read from somewhere that she was the real life inspiration for Goldie O'Gilt. Don't quote me on that though. But here's a link anyway:http://www.yukon-news.com/letters-opinions/the-yukons-dance-hall-queen  
> -I don't know fuck about mining gold, don't expect to find any accuracy from this fic.  
> -The chapter name comes from a Halsey song of the same name.


	4. Lust for life (Keeps us alive)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Marry me?

Seen from Blackjack Saloon's window, Scrooge’s silhouette was no more than a tiny black dot against the backdrop of the Yukonian snow hills, illuminated by the silvery moonlight. This was it; the pivotal moment that would decide so much. A moment that dragged on, leaving Goldie anxious, and giving her a feeling of something trying to desperately crawl its way out of her skin. But no matter how antsy she felt, she did not move from her spot by the window. Her eyes were nailed to the dot, fearing that it might decide to continue on its way and disappear beyond the horizon.

The figure of the man, that Steele had sent to deliver Goldie’s letter, had left a moment ago; leaving only Scrooge’s lonely and unmoving dot to stand alone at the edge of the city. He had now gotten the letter, might be reading it right at this moment. Reading the words that had been hastily scrabbled together in panic. Words that Goldie hadn’t had the time to polish or think through. Words that had been scratched to the paper while half of Dawson had still been in flames and while Goldie had had the horrible realisation that she had somehow managed to make things so much worse for herself in her attempt to reach Scrooge.

The dot didn’t move one way or another.

In hindsight, sending the police force under false charges to drag Scrooge out of his claim and down to Dawson, might not have been the most delicate way to convey her feelings “ _I miss you”_ to him. Staying inside a burning building, just to force Scrooge to have a private moment with her, had also in hindsight been an overkill. Her affinity for drama had on this instance managed to work against her.

She could only hope that her letter would do its job convincing Scrooge that he should come back one more time. That despite everything, Goldie still felt that they weren’t done yet. That they both deserved to explore the connection that had managed to worm its way between them during the long three weeks in White Agony Creek.    

Around her, the clean-up was being wrapped up and girls were getting ready for their show. The show would go on in the Blackjack saloon, especially after a fire when the embers were still warm. These were the times when people spent money recklessly, bellies full of salvaged food, and minds light after nearly dying in fire. She knew that tonight she would make more money than she had for the whole week, as everyone would suddenly decide to celebrate their continuous existence by getting blasted drunk.

In the distance the dot still didn’t move.

From the other side of the door Snakehips was calling for her. It was time for the spectacle, the treat that all these miners had paid their meagre possessions for. The voice that had charmed the north. The song from the ice queen herself. The voice that was colder than the snowstorm outside, and more enchanting than the northern lights. It was time to go and give the audience the dream that they had paid for.

Looking once more at the dot, at Scrooge, her heart leapt and fluttered with a sudden desire to race after him, to the unforgiving Yukon night, and tell him with her own words everything that she had tried to fit in to the letter.

But she was no longer a girl, she was a grown woman who had taken dreams and made them work for her. Money was still her one true love, and you always answered the call of your one true love.

So, she went to the stage and pushed any thoughts about the dot away. There was nothing more that she could do anymore. Scrooge would either accept her words, and seek Goldie out, or he would discard them and disappear from Goldie’s life for good.

 

Her audience was happier than ever; Throwing money into the night like it was nothing. It seemed that the flame marks, scorched wood, and the lingering smell of fire only made everyone more eager to party hard and expensive. Alcohol flowed and the players played until their fingers were numb.

Goldie lost exactly on note on her song when she saw a familiar fur hat creep through the doors of her saloon. He looked lost, almost unsure, and extremely judgemental seeing the orgy of consumption around him. Knowing him, it was not a surprise. Those that spotted his arrival, and were still sober enough to recognise him, kept a fearful distance.

Luckily, Goldie was on the last verse of her song. If she hadn’t been, she would have created a new, much shorter ending for her performance. It was all she could do to finish her notes with something resembling grace, before she jumped off, not even thinking about going through backstage at this point.

Their unexpected guest did not go unnoticed. The entire saloon seemed to have turned their eyes to the most unpopular duck in Dawson standing in a silent and shadowy corner by the doors, trying to blend in with the walls. It was a great difference from the showy entrance that had marked his arrival to Blackjack last time.

Trying to stay out of trouble had never worked out well for this particular duck, and it didn’t work now. Especially seeing his history with the place, and the people who were currently packed inside said place. It was to be expected that if Scrooge McDuck was to show his face in the Blackjack saloon again, a fight was already shaping up in the immediate future.

Goldie rushed across the floor in a way that was entirely unbecoming of the ice queen of Dawson, but that was forgiven by her audience because they had already found a new point of focus for their eyes. A show of Scrooge McDuck preparing to punch the living daylights out of a drunk gambler that had decided to try his changes against the king of Klondike. 

Goldie used the bar as a high-speed runway to make her way through masses of people in the saloon faster, and landed near her stubborn Scottish sourdough, heels sharply clacking against the floor. “Now, now boys. He is with me.” She sweetly threatened. The swaying gambler backed away, unhappily, but backed away nevertheless. In here, Goldie was the queen, and when she says that a fight will not start, it will not.

Well, at least as long as the Scottish log-head would keep his furry hat on and stayed in line.  

He did. Which was just as well, as otherwise Goldie might have to do something they would all later regret. Repairing the damage done to her saloon by the fire is already too costly for comfort, she would not take kindly if any more of the furniture gets broken.

For a breath, they both just stood there, failing to exchange any greetings.

“Come along then McDuck. I’m sure you’ll remember our regular booth.” Goldie was the one to break the silence, grapping Scrooge’s hand and half-forcefully dragging him away. The eyes of her customers burn in her back, but right now she doesn’t care.

The two ducks made their way up the stairs to the secluded corner table where they had had their first proper meeting. Goldie snatched a bottle of the good expensive whiskey from the cabinets underneath the bar on the way. She had never seen Scrooge drink, but she sure could use something that didn’t taste disgusting after this disaster of a day.

“Would you like to have a drink?” Goldie asked waving the bottle in her hand, while they both sat down. Her voice was just an octave higher than was usual for her and she hoped Scrooge wouldn’t notice. She might have scribbled a lot of emotional mush in to that letter, but now in her own home ground she would not be caught being too emotional.

“If you think I’m stupid enough to drink anything in this place, you either underestimate me, or are insane.”

“No, that’s entirely understandable. I wouldn’t drink anything offered by me either. We are both too smart to not learn from our mistakes.”

“Did you mean it?” Trust Scrooge to cut straight into the heart of the matter without dilly-dallying around. It was one of his more endearing qualities. However, in this instance his endearing straightforwardness was working against Goldie, who suddenly found herself perspiring, slightly light headed, and strangely hyper-aware at the same time. She might have preferred to dilly-dally.

“Yes.” Her beak formed the response, light as a feather. “Yes, I did. It was written in haste, while my saloon was still burning away and the Mounties kept flurrying around all over the place, but I did mean it.”

A silence descended over them and Goldie would have taken more enjoyment out of seeing the king of Klondike blush, if she wasn’t sure that she was also flushing most unattractively under the heavy air and the mutual dislike of showing one’s feelings.

“Well I, I thought… I almost didn’t read it because I thought…”

“Oh! Well I guess it could be possible that you could have gotten bit of wrong impression with the police and all…”

“No! I mean yes, I mean it’s-…”

The world was ending. She could hear the darkness calling for her, she could feel the awkwardness taking a horrible sentient form and swallowing her up and she would welcome the sweet embrace of death just to escape. She would do anything, say anything to escape the ghost of conversation dying and regenerating again and again between them.

“Did you know that Old-Joe has been trying to wash up gold only from the straight part of the creek that passes through his claim and hasn’t once touched the gravel deposits in the inside bends!?” She desperately blurted out.

“What? That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard!”

“I know! He came in last week and you cannot _believe_ what he said about how he still insist that the gold must somehow magically appear where he has been digging for two years now! I almost rolled my eyes off my skull. And he isn’t even the only one who has no idea how to actually mine. Now listen to this-“

 

The moon climbed higher up in the sky over Yukon, and the two ducks sitting inside the Blackjack saloon let the time slip forwards without paying it any mind. Goldie was happily relaying some of the wilder stories of her life in Dawson, the bottle that she had bought with her mostly untouched. The warmth in her body and the lightness in her mind had nothing to do with the modest glass she kept sipping from.

The usually so sour miner, listening to her, had star-struck glint in his eyes, which was also the product of nothing else but the company. He still hadn’t taken anything offered to him. He was in love, not stupid.

“-And then I pushed him into the cage with the husky dogs! The man still has teeth marks in his left arm.”

“So that’s where those scars came from. You know I always wondered. You’re a one crazy lass miss. Goldie, and I mean it as a compliment.”

“Don’t worry, I always take comments like that as compliments.”

They shared a chuckle, which was interrupted by the voice of one of the dancehall girls calling for Goldie.

“Miss. O’Gilt!”

“Oh, hold on.” She turned around to face her employee, who was watching the two ducks with an amused glint in her eyes.

“This better be important Lulu! Can’t you see that I’m busy?”

“Absolutely. But I have to point out that it is closer to morning than night, and maybe you should take your conquest somewhere else at this point.”

“Oy! Who’re you calling a- Wait a second! Closer to morning! I still have to make my way back to my claim. The march is going to take at least half a day!”

“Don’t be silly. You will faint halfway there if you start marching now.”

Lulu slinked away, unnoticed by the pair who were too busy bickering with well-practised ease.

“Well the faster I start marching the faster I can fall down to my bed at my claim.”

“you’ll break yourself falling to that hard thing. Of course you’ll stay the night here.”

“Here? As in here, here?”

“Yes, here as in here. I see that your intelligence has not grown from our last parting.”

“Now you listen here! My intelligence is fine enough to be suspicious of letting myself be unconscious around you in your home ground.”

“Calm down, the only thing I’m trying to steal here is your last name.”

“My-….”

 Goldie winced. Her beak had run off without an input from her brain. McDuck seemed to have that effect on her. Time for deflection.

“All our paid rooms are full, but you can take my bed and try out an actual mattress for the first time in your life. I’ll even lend you some cans to prop against the door so you’ll know if anyone tries to sneak in and abduct your vulnerable self.”

“Do I detect some sarcasm in your tone?”

“No, this is my normal tone around you.”

“I couldn’t stay in a lady’s room. I’ll have you known that I have gone without sleep much longer than this. One lousy hike is nothing.”

“No doubt, but you will get free breakfast if you stay.”

The natural cheapness was warring against whatever it was that was arguing against staying, on Scrooge’s face. Goldie, however, was on a winning streak and the euphoria in her mind was making everything go just a tad bit faster and brighter. For the first time she understood why her customers could so easily get addicted to gambling. And like a gambler on a lucky streak, she kept moving on, fast and sure. McDuck would not disappear off to the wilderness tonight. Or this morning. Whatever. Grabbing the grumpy duck by the arm, Goldie dragged him towards her personal suite. She knew her Scrooge, cheapness would win eventually.

Pushing Scrooge through, Goldie couldn’t help but reflect on how Scrooge was the first person to see the inside of this room, aside from Goldie herself. Once, she had vowed to never let anyone get under her skin. And look at her now, practically throwing this dirty, ill-mannered, Scottish gold-digger inside her sanctuary.

Only after the door was pushed shut behind her back, did Goldie hesitate. The silence around them was so fragile and encompassing at the same time, holding in it all the doubts and fears of both of them. “Scrooge look, I-“

“So you did really mean it. What you wrote in that letter.” Scrooge’s eyes roamed over the room quickly, taking in the surprising bareness. The table next to the window held exactly one candle, an old notebook, and nothing else. Probably the miner had expected Goldie’s room to look more like a dressing room, with sparkling dresses and mirrors all around. But dressing rooms were dressing rooms and Goldie preferred to keep her personal space divided from her work.

“I didn’t believe it at first. I’m not sure if I still do. Goldie, I don’t know how to trust people.”

“You don’t have to trust me. I mean, I don’t know how to trust people either, that’s not what-“

Scrooge stopped her with a brief kiss that more surprised her than did anything else. This was the first time that Scrooge had initiated contact between them.

“I would argue that trust is the whole core of arrangements like these-“

“That’s because you are a romantic.”

“I thought I was being a realist?”

“No, you were definitely being a romantic.”

“And what exactly are you being?”

“The person who introduces you to the idea of a mattress.”

 

 

It was the darkest hour before the dawn that found the two ducks laying on Goldie’s bed, breathing the same air under the last light of the night’s full moon.

“Did you mean it?”

“What?”

“You said you wanted to steal my last name?”

Goldie shifted so she could better face the other duck. His dark blue eyes seemed to shift colours under the moonlight pouring through the small window.

“No.”

His eyes narrowed.

“I was hoping you might give it willingly.”

There was an audible gulp to be heard. “That sounds like a really risky idea.”

“I don’t know. It sounds like a really good idea to me.” It did. It had been a slip of a tongue some hours ago, but now it seemed like the most logical conclusion of both of their lives. It was an inevitable, something so crazy that it would be good for them.

“But is it really. It would seem that every time we come together we end up fighting.”

“Not tonight. My saloon is still entirely intact.”

“It was already half-burned to the ground.”

“That doesn’t count, it happens all the time.”

“Goldie, you know that I’m a difficult person to be around. Hard, stubborn, anti-social.”

“Exactly. I’ve already seen you at your worst. I know what I’m getting here. And you already know that I can be selfish, mean-spirited, liar of a woman that robbed your hard-earned wealth. I mean look at us! Who else would even have us?”

“I don’t think that will be any problem for you, the most desired woman in Yukon.”

“But it is. You were right earlier. This thing does need trust and understanding and compromises and all those difficult things. I could have those with you, not with others. You make me sharper, maybe even more cunning, but in a good way if you can somehow imagine. And for the record, I don’t think that finding a gal that wants to stick around the miner with a golden nugget the size of a goose egg and the richest claim of Yukon will be any problem for you either.” 

“Finding someone I would _like_ to have around is in itself a miracle I thought would never happen to me.”

“See, that’s supposed to be my argument.”

“I didn’t know we were having an argument.”

“We aren’t. We are having a negotiation.”

“How would it even practically work? You have a thriving business here. I have a miserable hut in the woods. I don’t even know what you want from your future.”

“Now, I think your hut was rather charming in its own way. And we don’t have to know all that. We’ll just make it up as we go along. It’ll be an adventure.”

A smile flickered on Scrooge’s face, one that Goldie couldn’t help but return with her own wicked one, which seemed to say: _I dare you!_

“I have always been the adventurous kind.”

“See, there’s the spirit. Besides, you haven’t heard my most convincing argument yet.” Goldie propped herself up, leaning on her elbows, and blew an errant strand of hair from her face. She couldn’t remember the last time that she had been this excited about anything.

“Really?” Scrooge questioned half bemused, half genuinely curious.

“Yes, you see, if you were ever to propose to any other girl, you would have to buy her the wedding ring. I however, happen to have a perfectly nice golden ring on my chest over there.” warm Amusement flickered on her eyes as Goldie slipped from the bed and made her way to her most treasured belongings. There, inside an old wooden jewellery box sat her mother’s old ring. The only richness her family had ever owned. Her father had used it to propose to her mother when they had both been young and happy in Ireland.

She slid back to sit on the bed, holding golden ring in front of Scrooge’s eyes

“Marry me?”

 His face went through a range of emotions all the way from gobsmacked, to nervous, to longing, to admiring, to thoughtful.  

“Surely Scrooge McDuck wouldn’t say no to free gold offered to him?” She aimed for teasing, and ended up sounding nervous.

“No, surely that would be just financially unwise.” He answered faintly, looking still a bit dazed. Then shaking his head a bit, a new sobriety arrived in his eyes, which turned to look deep in to Goldie’s owns. “Do you really believe in us? That this crazy, mad leap of faith will work? That you know what you are asking?”

“Yes I do.”

“Then yes. I would be honoured.”

Outside, first rays of the dawn could be seen peeking over the horizon, but the two ducks inside paid them no mind. Sleep had finally claimed them, after so many hours of staying awake, and after so many both emotionally and physically draining feats. In the morning-light, shining through the window, the small golden band around Scrooge McDuck’s finger glinted lightly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -Hearts of Yukon is absolutely my favourite Don Rosa comic of all time, the art is just gorgeous, the ending is heart breaking, and Goldie is a dramatic mess who keeps making everything unnecessarily difficult! I love it, she is so extra in that comic, it's hilarious.   
> -Goldie proposed, because lets be honest, Scrooge would never get the words out of his mouth, he is tough in every other way expect when it comes to feelings.   
> -Does this mean that Goldie's mom and Scrooge have fingers of the same size? Um... suspend your disbelief with that one okay, it's symbolic and cute.   
> -I keep stealing chapter names from Lana Del Rey songs, because I keep listening to them while I write.


	5. Two Cold Klondike Hearts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> can you hear the wedding bells... (probably not, because these two are going to have the most discreet wedding in history.)

January slowly turned into February, and Goldie found that she was facing a moral dilemma. She had claimed the heart of Scrooge McDuck and now found herself afraid that she would tarnish it. She had gotten to know the duck behind the awful temper, knew that behind all that bravado was hidden a dream. Dream of making it in this world with his conscience clean. To create a fortune through hard work, honesty and wit. It was a child’s dream, one that every other adult in Dawson had abandoned years ago, if the idea had managed to ever even cross their minds to begin with.

But like the valley of White Agony Creek, it was an essential part of who Scrooge McDuck was. To take that dream away from him would be to destroy him.

Now that Goldie had tied herself as a part of that life, as part of that man, she felt responsibility to also cherish that dream. If they were to share lives and Goldie kept her less than honest business practices, Goldie’s own crimes would eventually leak over to tarnish that dream of Scrooge. That couldn’t be allowed to happen, which meant that there would need to be some house cleaning to be done at the saloon _._

Her official reasoning was that now that the mounted police had taken notice of Dawson, it only made sense to get rid of all criminal activities in her saloon. Besides, she was well off enough that she could afford to not steal from people already starving. It’s not like they wouldn’t carry their riches in here anyway, she still had the best drinks in town.

Her unofficial reason was miles away, around the finger of a one Scottish gold-digger. Or more probably safe in the tin locker with the claim deed and the goose egg nugget, where long harsh work-days wouldn’t be able to damage it. Scrooge could never bring himself to harm gold, even by proxy.

 

* * *

 

 

In the eyes of Dawson, nothing had changed. Scrooge McDuck had slipped away during the clear morning after the fire, having no trouble going unnoticed in a city half hangover, half still busy assessing damage. If there were some eyes that spotted him leaving the city from the direction of the Blackjack saloon, they assumed that he had settled his business with the ice queen, and that would be that. There were very few (maybe some of the dancing girls) whose minds it would cross that McDuck and O’Gilt felt anything but loathing (maybe laced with lust) for each other.

Goldie inspected her saloon and finished the reparations. Soon, the saloon was once again operating just like nothing had happened. The liquor was still the best in town, the girls prettiest (most healthy looking) and Glittering Goldie’s voice was still worth spending your earnings for. And most importantly, these days you actually ended up losing only the amount what you had intended, when walking in those doors. The idea that the beautiful, glittering woman on stage was now engaged, would have never crossed any of her customer’s minds.

The days kept Goldie busy, but during nights, loneliness and doubt sunk in. It was then that she wished that she would have had a ring of her own to play with, just to remind her that this promise was real. Something tangible. She would have to talk to Scrooge about how they could get a second ring. They were an unusual couple already; they could do something as unusual as both have wedding rings. Not like Goldie hadn’t already thrown every single tradition out of the window by slipping the ring on Scrooge’s finger that night.

Goldie had once sworn against marriage, always coveted her own freedom, but right now she wished for nothing more than to marry McDuck. They would make their own rules with everything they would do. Scrooge would claim his fortune without ever sinking to dishonesty, and Goldie could get married and it wouldn’t turn into a cage around her. They would chase the impossible horizons and reach them.

If only the future didn’t seem so far away. Sometimes it was hard to keep her conviction when the world around you did not change to match the change inside you.

Scrooge came down every two weeks for a supply run and to sneak inside Goldie’s room, (he had keys to the backdoor nowadays) like they were characters in a Shakespearean play, instead of two hardened veterans of Yukon. It was still for the best. The less Dawson knew of their new arrangement, the better.

 

In the middle of March, Scrooge presented Goldie with a ring of her own. He had finished shopping for his supplies, and Goldie had found him waiting for her in her room. He was amusing himself by leafing through the saloon’s accounting books, when Goldie stepped in, pleasantly surprised.

“Well, hello there! You’re early. I thought you were coming only the next week?”

Scrooge put the book down from his hands and fixed his attention to his fiancée. “The steam pipe went bust again.” He fidgeted a little before continuing, “Also, last time I was down I had something made, and I needed to pick it up.”

Scrooge pulled something from the pocket of his deer-skin jacket, which glittered in the faint lighting of the room.  Stepping closer, Goldie could see that it was a golden ring.     

“I had it made from the gold I dug up in White Agony. I presented the gold-smith with plenty of reason to not babble, but this is Dawson, so the word will start going around probably in a week.”

He grasped Goldie’s hand with familiarity that had grown between them during these months, and slid the ring to her finger, to match his own band.

“It’s not like they know who it is for.” Goldie answered, absentmindedly. She was still busy admiring the little golden band on her finger, happy and pleasantly content to know that up in White Agony her fiancé had had the exact same thought as Goldie concerning rings.

 The ring was done to match her mother’s wedding ring, expect that this one was, of course, brand new. More important was that it was made of gold that Scrooge had dug up with his own hands. It was perfect. It was a little part of his miner right there.

“It’s perfect. I meant to ask for a ring of my own to keep me warm and happy in Dawson, but you got ahead of me. Thank you.”  She smiled and flopped down to sit on her bed, starting to remove her stage regalia. Scrooge slid to sit next to her and helped, detangling the comb from her hair with nimble fingers, and opening the clasps of her jewels behind her neck.

“I know you won’t be able to wear it during work, but I thought-“

Goldie snorted. “Yes, my customers would have aneurysms if they found out that I was engaged.”

At the contemplating look on Scrooge’s face, Goldie gently slapped his arm. “They do still bring money to my business, don’t go looking that wistful at the image.”

Now it was Scrooge’s turn to snort. “One can always enjoy the thought at least.”

“Oh, honestly. You don’t have to like them to make profit from them.” Goldie flopped backwards to lay on her bed, throwing her high heels from her feet with one swift swing. The other heel clattered against the wall and slid to the floor. The other managed to make graceful arch and ended up perching on the backrest of the chair.

“Hmm. I’ll take your word for it.” Scrooge let his fingers make their way through the, slightly damp from sweat, golden hair. Hearing the noise that Goldie made under his fingers, most accurately described as somewhere close to purring, made a small flicker of warmth light in his chest.

“The claim is slowly but surely showing signs of drying out. I won’t be able to dig gold there for very long. Year or two at maximum.” He changed the subject matter, still carding his fingers through her hair.

“Places like these never last. I have been thinking of selling the saloon now that its worth is at its peak.” She answered, eyes still firmly closed.

“Maybe one more year in Dawson. What do you want to do after?”

“I’m not sure. I haven’t ever really been one for long-term planning.” She admitted, burrowing closer to Scrooge.

 “I would like to return to Scotland one day.” Scrooge’s voice softened with the mention of his homeland. “See my sisters. I’m not sure if I want to live there for the rest of my life though.”

“I don’t know, it could be nice. I could be a lady of the castle.” Replied amusedly, but not insincerely, images of Scottish highland flickering in her mind. 

“You haven’t even seen the place. Its walls have more holes than Swiss cheese.”

“I’ve lived in Dawson city for years now. Not like there are many things that could get worse than Dawson city during winter.”

“True.”

They spent a moment in silence, before Scrooge continued, a thoughtful tone in his words.

“We could try investing into business somewhere more civilized than Dawson city. You already know how to run one. I have a variety of skills. It could work out.”

“Of course it would. Team McDuck has already faced Dawson, it can only get easier from here on.” A smile was audible in Goldie’s answer.

“Team McDuck, eh. So, when do you think we should make it official.”

“When are we ready to create the biggest scandal of the northern territories?” Goldie rolled over, a conspiratory smile on her beak and a glint in her eyes. “We could go right now. Go with the flow. Enjoy the looks on everyone’s faces.”

Scrooge just rolled his eyes at the mirth dancing on his girl’s face. Frozen flame of the north his tail feathers, the girl was warm and lively as crackling campfire. “You will lose half of your customers if they find out that you tied the knot with the most despised duck in town. The other half will stay to flirt with you just so they can spite me.”

“Unfortunately true. Timing is going to be everything with this bombshell. I guess our only choice is to get married when we are ready to leave. It would probably be safest to wait till we have left Dawson entirely to wed.”

“It would be cautious and wise.” Scrooge agreed.

“You want to get married here too then. Good.” Goldie smiled.

“It is Yukon after all. Somehow it would feel wrong, to do it anywhere else.” Scrooge answered the smile. Distantly the thought of his sisters’ anger at not being able to attend his wedding flickered through his mind, but he brushed it aside. As much as the idea of marrying in the familiar halls of his ancestors might have tempted him, he was also not ready to wait that long. Their lives were too uncertain for that. 

“On our last day in Dawson then. Then I can finally start wearing this ring on my finger.” Goldie rolled the golden band on her palm, enjoying the way the lamp light made it shine differently, depending on which angle she lifted it up over her head.  

“And I guess that if I get a life where I don’t have to be elbows deep on frozen gravel every day, I can start wearing mine too.”

Goldie closed her fist around the ring and brought it close to her beak, taking a long inhale of air. “Will you think me mad if I were to tell you that I love the scent of this ring? The scent of pure gold.”

“Oh you too?” Aside from the pleasant surprise in his voice, Scrooge seemed to find the idea of someone spending time enjoying the scent of gold completely normal.

Somewhere in the distance Goldie can almost hear the voices that have followed her for her whole life. Calling her greedy, selfish, gold-loving wicked woman, the worst kind of a woman there is. One that covets riches and diamonds. But the voices are nothing for the new beautiful chant that drowns out all the insults and slurs. That’s why he loves me! That’s why he loves me!

 

* * *

 

The icicles grew longer faster than the days did, but they both grew nevertheless. The cycle of time rolled on, and every night the golden ring would be taken out of its box to be admired and fiddled with. Other great amusement, that Goldie indulged during the evenings, was listening to the gossip of Dawson. The rumour that Scrooge McDuck had had a ring fashioned from his gold, flied across the city, getting new aspects every time it bounced from one side of the city to another. Sometimes it was hard to not let the self-satisfied smirk show on her face, as Dawson tried to guess in vain, who was the lucky girl getting her share of the riches in White Agony.

“Well, he’s bound to carry it down to me one day!” Goldie had answered when Lulu had slyly told the story of the ring to her. “Just like every other man in Dawson, McDuck will grovel before my feet soon,” Goldie announced in the most haughty manner that she could. The private joke was too good to not play around a little bit. As hoped, Lulu had rolled her eyes and let the subject go. “I’m not sure what is greater, your ambition or your greed.” She had muttered, turning back to her mirror. Goldie had not answered, just smirked and thought of the faces the girls would make, if they had known that the ring in question was securely locked in a safe in Goldie’s own room.

 

* * *

 

“Bring me a box of chocolates from Whitehorse.” Goldie send her fiancé off. The time had come and the future was knocking on their doors. There was a man coming tonight to buy her saloon, and she was hopeful that she might even make a neat profit of the whole thing. The ring burned in her pocket, and life was rushing towards them, uncertain and full of new paths to choose from.

So, the only thing to do was to put one foot in front of the other. Scrooge had disappeared into the horizon in his sled, waving to Goldie once, which Goldie took to mean that he would deliver Goldie’s whims. It could, of course, also mean ‘of course I am not wasting money on such unnecessary expenses’ but Goldie could always hope. Turning around, to make her hike back to the town from the edge of the wilderness, Goldie turned her mind towards the more pressing issues, like tying of her loose ends in Dawson. First of all, she would have to find a new owner for her saloon.

 

The man, who Goldie finally choose to be the new owner of the Blackjack saloon, was an older gentleman that at first glance had looked too weak and frail to be anywhere near Dawson. He was one of those born-rich types that were looking for an adventure, and Goldie had instantly written him off as someone who would have himself killed in a week. She had been wrong, because as it turned out, Lord. Salesbury was not only in excellent health for his age, but had also spent his youth in his mansion learning martial arts form the most expensive tutors available. Once the man had come on top of one of the famous Blackjack Saloon brawls with her meanest frequents, Goldie had decided that anyone who could hold his own against the Racoon-brothers, would last in Dawson fine.

The other perk was that the gentleman had a very liberal touch with his money and had agreed to a price leaning generously upwards from what Goldie had originally planned.

“You’ve done quite well for a lone woman holding up a business up here. I must say that at first I almost couldn’t believe it. Oh, the wonders of this adventurous country. I already feel myself becoming younger and bolder.” Lord Salesbury passionately exclaimed, leaning on the counter of the saloon, and looking at the customers, who were eagerly comparing frostbites in their toes, with completely unwarranted excitement.  

“Hmm, it has its perks and downsides.” Goldie dryly commented, contemplating whether to swipe off the bottle of good whiskey into her luggage.

“But tell me my lady, what do you plan to do now. Surely your family misses you quite awfully.”

“I wouldn’t count on that. But I’ll start by marrying my fiancé and see where it goes from there.”

Lord Salesbury, whose pearly clean teeth almost shone from his mouth, smiled blindingly and straightened up from his comfortable lean.

“Ah! A man! Of course, how delightful! Settling down with some good lad! I’m possibly chuffed for your sake Miss.”

“Settling down? With Scrooge? That sounds a bit of an oxymoron.” She stifled her laugh, trying in vain to imagine Scrooge ever settling down. He had already been across the globe several times, and still one could hear the wanderlust in his voice when he spoke of the future. He would most probably go as mad as she would, if they ever tried to properly settle down.

Her and Lord Salesbury’s little heart-to-heart was interrupted by a commotion coming by the saloon doors. Goldie quickly excused herself, from the new owner of her saloon to see what was happening

“I’ll thank you for the sentiment anyway, now if you’ll excuse me, I think I’m being called.”

Lulu was making shocked noises by the doors, amongst other girls who seemed to be doing nothing useful, but still making a lot of noise.

“Look Goldie! It finally happened. He did come crawling back to you!” Lulu pointed at the entrance of the saloon, where indeed a figure covered in snow laid beak against the floor, groaning. A very familiar looking figure too.

“Scrooge! What happened to you? I thought you would have been back by yesterday?! I have been-“Goldie looked around at the faces that had all turned towards the spectacle. There weren’t many, it was the middle of the day, but there were too many. “The new owner of the saloon, Mr. Salesbury, will offer free drinks to everyone at the counter right now!”

After the stampede calmed down, Goldie half supported and half carried his fiancé to a table at the corner. She left him to gather his wits by himself only for long enough that she could grab a warm pan of coffee and press a generous cup into Scrooge’s stiff, frozen hands.

“You must be really out of it if you drink my coffee without even sniffing it first.” Goldie tried their old joke feebly, but her worry was clear in her voice.

“Gllblblbtmm” was the only thing that escaped Scrooge’s beak, that was still leaning against the table. The fingers curling around the warm cup were the only indication that her fiancé was aware of his situation in any way.

“Eloquent as always,” Goldie huffed. “What happened? I heard there was an awful storm out there, cutting most of the travel ways.”

Scrooge lifted his face of the table and groaned, but also took a little sip from his steaming mug, which was encouraging. “There was. I got stuck in it, lost my sled. Then things got worse.” He finally rasped out.

“Your sled? Was there?-“

“All the gold and documents are safe in Whitehorse, I was returning here when the storm hit. It was only the pots and pans of White Agony Creek that went down. Mining equipment. The old coat.” Scrooge’s voice went forcefully flat, and Goldie realised only after a second what was wrong. She had been concentrated only on the fact that Scrooge was alive, but now she also realised that while their gold was safe, all Scrooge’s memories from Yukon had just gone down with the sled. And they both knew which one Scrooge in truth valued more. 

"And well, you remember that I was supposed to take some of your belongings there too in advance." 

Goldie did remember now, and with a sudden sense of loss, realised that she had sent two of her better ballroom dresses and her mother's old decorative-comb, with that sled. The sled that was now lost to the ice. 

“It’s lucky I was wearing this in my finger when the sled was eaten by the glacier.” Scrooge felt the golden band in his finger. Goldie silently agreed.

“It’s a shame, that coffee pot held fond memories for me.” Goldie joked, trying to lift his spirits. After all, they were both fine, and they would not need the pickaxes to remind themselves of that. She would not need her old dresses, she could get new ones. (She would just have to let go of mother's comb.)

Scrooge touched his beak unconsciously, a memory of said coffeepot being thrown straight into his face months and months ago. “Also the last chocolate box in northern territories is now firmly entombed inside a glacier. And you wouldn’t believe the prize I had to pay for them.” The irritation in which the last words were said, told Goldie that her fiancé was just fine.

“Well my mother always said that food was best saved in cold. Maybe they will better with age.”

“Hmph. Let’s hope so, because I will return to collect them one day, they were that expensive.” Scrooge huffed again, and muttered something about sweetshops robbing their customers under his breath. “Well, how have things by this end been?” he finally asked, probably trying to distract himself of the trauma of buying overpriced sweets.

Instead of answering, Goldie countered with a question of her own, the implications of Scrooge’s sled sinking into the glacier making their way through her mind.  “Hold on. Did you walk all the way through the storm here?”

“Not exactly.” Scrooge deflected. “Well, yes I did, but I actually had to walk all the way from Whitehorse. After the glacier ate my sled I ended up crashing into Soapy slick’s boat-”

Goldie buried her face in her hands. These kinds of things only happened to Scrooge. “Does he still have his boat, or did you sink another one?” She asked behind her hands, genuinely curious.

“haha. I do know how to behave when the situation demands. No I played nice and gnashed my teeth the entire journey back to Whitehorse.” The sneer in Scrooge’s tone told everything one needed to know about his thoughts concerning said journey.

“And you couldn’t possibly wait there till the weather turned more agreeable.”

“That could have been months. Besides…” Scrooge hesitated to continue his sentence.

“Besides what? I didn’t quite catch that.” Goldie pressed on, lifting her face from her hands to look Scrooge pointedly.

“Besides I didn’t want you to think that I had run off.” He finally muttered, staring at his coffee.

“Idiot.” Goldie concluded, after a brief silence.

“Also Soapy Slick kept pestering me about what had been in the sled. I was angry enough to walk the entire way just to get some peace.” Scrooge defended himself, slightly offended. “But never mind all that, you haven’t even heard the good news!” Scrooge’s entire posture changed dramatically from the earlier sulk, to eager excitement. “We are millionaires!” He exclaimed, the words tumbling from his beak hurried and joyful.

“Come again,” was the only thing Goldie could get out of her beak.

“Million dollars! That’s how much we have money in the Whitehorse bank right now. Million! Can you even imagine how much money that is? Million!”

Goldie felt the chair under her tilt. But it wasn’t the chair, it was the entire world around her, spinning a graceful arch around her eyes, throwing her stomach around and alternatively making the gravity pull her towards the floor and then towards the ceiling. She had known that Scrooge dug more gold than anyone else in Yukon, but she had never quite realized the full implications of all the little bags being carried to Whitehorse. After all, he had been paying off Soapy’s loan at the same time. A million dollars.

“Well I’ll be…” She whispered, still absolutely stunned.

“I also bought us a spot of land from Casey Coot.” Scrooge continued his speech, still as excited and eyes twinkling. “And more importantly, I got Casey to sign his name to be my guarantor for the marriage licence.”

“And even the most ill-willed clergyman cannot dispute that we now meet the full requirement for a legal marriage.” Goldie finished the thought.

“I don’t think any city official will say a thing against the local millionaire.”

“Don’t underestimate this town’s capability for petty jealousy.”

“Yes, I have been on receiving end quite few times. But I meant it, what has been going on in your end. You managed to find a new owner I gather. Though I’m not sure if he looks quite up to the task….” Scrooge craned his neck to peer at the English gentleman who was apparently deeply invested into very one-sided conversation with a local, who had his concentration kept on his beer.

“Don’t worry, you haven’t seen his left hook. Besides, he’s filthy rich and calling the cheque he wrote me generous would be an underestimate.” Goldie pulled the paper from the folds of her dress, up for Scrooge to see, all zeroes nicely in sight.

“That many zeroes?! What a beauty! Can I hold it just for a second?” In Scrooge’s eyes, one could almost see the dollar signs.

Goldie passed the cheque to Scrooge, who cradled it in his palms with utmost delicacy. “We need to get this lovely to the Whitehorse bank as fast as possible, to be introduced to our other million dollars.” He concluded after a moment of sheer staring.

“I know. Is there anything in White Agony that you need to get, before we leave Dawson for good?”

“Not anymore. I already emptied it all to the sled.” Which was now lost.

“Maybe you left something behind. We are going to need to wait day and a night anyway between getting a marriage licence and being able to get our marriage officiated. We can as well pop to the valley one last time.”

“Of course.” The gentle smile had slipped on Scrooge’s beak, the one that he gave only to Goldie. “Let’s get that licence then, there’s nothing more to be done now.”

“Let’s.”

 

 

Getting the marriage licence was just as vexing as Goldie had expected. At first, they had managed to walk by without attracting too much attention, but soon there were curious eyes following the unlikely couple making their way towards the magistrate, and most of those curious eyes were not curious in a benign way.

The clerk looked at them both with narrowed eyes for a long while, before moving on with the papers. He was helped to speed up by the evil eye given to him by the two ducks, who made it very clear that they would not stand for any bureaucratical sabotage to be used against them.

(No, he doesn’t have a bride waiting for him at home. How can we prove it? How can you prove that he has a secret wife tucked somewhere? Do you want a legal document from every woman on earth that they aren’t married to him?!)

(Is she underage?! What does it look like you blind caribou’s backside!)

(No!! Of course we are not related!!)

(If you bring up feeble-mindedness, you must be feeble-minded yourself, because we are honestly running quite thin on our patience, and right now one of us just might do something unadvisable if you don’t finish your work and stop being petty.)

After the paper had been issued, and everyone’s tempers had been tested, there was nothing to be done but wait. 24 hours, and one meeting with father Judge later they would be a husband and wife. Mr. and Mrs. McDuck.

Leaving for White Agony, for the waiting period, was the best decision they could have made, seeing that the instant they stepped out of the magistrate, both already on the last tethers of their patience, it became clear that there would be no peace for them in the city.

“Oy! McDuck! What’cha still showing yer smug behind here for! And again dragging the lady around! Criminal!”

“Don’cha have any real men to pay for ya that you haf’ta leech off of that tightwad!?”

Goldie grabbed Scrooge’s hand and bit her tongue. “Let’s go get a sled and some dogs.”

“You just say the word, and I’ll plummet them so they won’t be able to speak anymore.”

Goldie tightened her grip on Scrooge’s hand. “We start a riot now, and Father judge will deem that we are criminals and refuses to marry us tomorrow. Let’s not take the risk.”

Scrooge squeezed Goldie’s hand in return, but did not otherwise comment. Goldie took that to mean that he agreed, or at least she hoped that Scrooge had agreed was not about to fly off to start a fight. She enjoyed seeing Scrooge demonstrate his powers (She enthusiastically enjoyed it) but now was not the time, nor the place. 

 

The more disappointing encounter came when they were harnessing the dogs, and Goldie could see Lulu rushing her way towards them, holding her skirts up in one hand. It came to Goldie that she had rarely ever seen the other girl outside the saloon. Surely she did go outside from time to time, but the scene still managed to hammer home how unreal the day still seemed to feel.

“Miss O’Gilt! Miss!”

Goldie signalled for Scrooge to wait with the dogs, while she strode to meet the girl. She wanted to have at least some privacy for this conversation. Mostly for Scrooge’s sake than anyone else. She had an inkling of feeling that whatever Lulu was about to say would not be especially kind to Scrooge.

“Lulu. What brings you here to ruin your shoes?”

“It’s being talked all over the town! The rumours! They say you had married Scrooge McDuck!” She rushed out on one long breath.

“Technically we are still engaged as we haven’t officiated anything yet, but broadly speaking you are right.”

“By the goodness! You! Getting married to that!”

“Yes.” That seemed to be only explanation necessary.

“But- You never cared for romance for one-“Then her eyes sharpened and Goldie’s heart sunk. She had never been particularly close with any of the other dancers, which wasn’t to say that their scorn wouldn’t hurt more than that of some faceless strangers. “He’s gotten rich. Of course. I just never thought that he would be the type to desire a wife, even a trophy one.”

“I would be careful with your words just now.” The frozen flame of the north still had her icicles in her voice if she so desired.

“How did you even do it? He’s never even looked at women in Dawson twice. He seemed to be perfectly happy alone with his gold up there.”

“Well, that’s between me and him, now isn’t it. And maybe he doesn’t care to drool after every woman in Dawson, doesn’t mean he can’t appreciate one that he has gotten to know better.”

“Did you lie to him about being pregnant?”

Hot flames swallowed the ice that had been wrapped over all of Goldie’s words. After all these years of supplying the girls with a secure and well-paying job. She had taken these women in a city not made for women and given them tools to succeed. Here was everything earned by that, a sneer and an insult spat to her face. The flames erupted and a swift kick to her shins brought the girl to familiarize with the muddy ground of Dawson city streets.

“It was a pleasure to work with you, but trade secrets are not for sale.”

Then she marched to the husk-sled, pushed Scrooge down to the passenger seat and grabbed the hook from the ground with much more force than necessary. After a mile or two Scrooge would point out that the dogs would not be able to keep up such break-neck speeds, and by then she would be rational enough to agree and slow down. Not yet though.

 

* * *

 

 

White Agony Creek was beautiful as always, the bed as uncomfortable as she remembered, and the animals as friendly as she knew them to be.

“I was thinking that we could try our hand at banking in Whitehorse.” Scrooge started a conversation after they had settled in as well as they could. Goldie was rummaging through the small cabinets in hopes of finding something worth salvation. So far she had found nothing but cob-webs.

“That sounds… actually a really good idea.” She called, half-way inside the cabinet.

“There has been sounds of gold being found in Alaska too. There are bound to be miners looking for loans heading that way. That’s how Soapy got so rich here in the first place. The miners are desperate for cash in the beginning.”

“And we would do it without drugging anyone. We would be good at it.” Goldie continued the train of thought, saying out loud what Scrooge was obviously implying. The irony of her statement was not lost on her, and neither was it lost on Scrooge.

“Are you going to be mad if I say that is still a bit surreal hearing you condemn foul-play like that?”

“No. I know how much honest work means to you.”

“Is that the only reason that you are doing it then? Because you want to humour me?”

Goldie backed out of the cabinet, kneeling on the floor, dust on her hair, and looked at his very-soon-to-officially-be-her-husband. “Scrooge, look. It is complicated. This had been my life for thirty years, not caring for things like that. It isn’t going to change in a year. Not even two.”

“I guess I’ll just have to take that for now. We do have the rest of our lives to work that one out.”

Warmth flooded Goldie’s insides on hearing Scrooge’s words, and she tried to remind herself that it was ridiculous to get this worked over by the mere mention of their future life together. Fortunately, she found herself a distraction, wedged behind the oven and the wall.

“Oh look! I found a frying pan. We can take that with us when we leave. At least something to remind us of this cabin.”

“The one with an inch of black tar stuck to its bottom?” Scrooge questioned.

“Oh yes! I think I remember this one. I tried cooking with it once. It made the food taste like rotten charcoal.”

“Distinct taste, I remember. If we ever get homesick we can just cook pancakes with that pan and be instantly reminded why we left.” Scrooge dryly noted, a hint of his deadpan humour bleeding through.

“An essential to take with us then.” Goldie chirped, and slapped the black and twisted pan on the table.

A comfortable silence fell over the two of them then, Scrooge looking out of the window, Goldie coming to lean next to him. Over the sky northern lights were slowly flickering to life, painting their flames over the Milky Way. It didn’t take long for the multi-coloured lights to gain mass and spread over the entire horizon, dancing their eternal dance.

“Come, Goldie. Let’s go outside. There’s something I want to do.” Scrooge said. Goldie just nodded and followed, intrigued.

Under the northern lights, surrounded by the untouched nature of White agony Creek, listening to the distant call of an owl in the distance, Scrooge took both of Goldie’s hands to his owns.

“I know that neither of us cares for pomp or spectacles in this union, and that our marriage will be legalized tomorrow with only ours and the clergy’s signatures, but I feel like there still should be something more. This is not a business deal we are making. I never thought about getting married, but now that we are here, I feel like I need this valley, this nature, and these stars, to hear me making a vow.”

The stars kept shining, the lights kept dancing. Somewhere a lone wolf called out with a howl. The world embraced the two souls in its cradle by being as magnificent as it could be.

“When I, Scrooge McDuck left home to seek my fortune, I was too young to think about love or marriage, or any concerns of that kind. I was hazily aware that it would most probably be my sisters that would continue the McDuck line, while I was too busy, too focused on seeking riches. By the time I made it here, I had forgotten what it had been like to trust someone besides myself. What it was like to have friendly company. To have someone who could enjoy my company. I had forgotten, but I had not forgotten what it was like to admire someone. I thought that admiring you would be the only thing I would ever do. Cherishing you only in my memory. I have never been luckier than when you took that choice away from me. When you offered your company to me, your presence and spirit not as an enemy, but as a companion. I admit that I still have trouble understanding that there is someone in this world that I can be with, to share myself with as I am. To be accepted as I am. You make me better Goldie O’Gilt. You teach me things, you comfort me, you put me down when I need it and you pick me up when I need it. Finding the Goose Egg Nugget was nothing to the night you asked to share your life with me. You are the end of the rainbow I have been seeking my whole life. You are the fortune I didn’t know I was looking for.”

Goldie felt the bite of frost touch her cheeks, as the cold air took hold of any liquid and froze it immediately. And people called Scrooge McDuck heartless. He had the greatest heart of Klondike and probably beyond.

She had to answer. To at least try and put some of her burning emotions into words.

“When I was a little girl, I stopped believing in goodness of people. Soon I stopped believing in love. I stopped believing in anything but myself and started to believe to the fact that other people were just stepping stones in my quest to survive in the hostile world, and later to not only survive but to thrive. I did not seek to be kind, because I didn’t believe that anyone in this world was truly kind. I only saw in the world openly cruel people and liars. I decided to be both as much as necessary. I was not a kind woman, or a good woman and sometimes not even decent one. And still you, my victim, treated me always with iron steady decency, fairness, and sometimes even a touch of kindness. You marched into my neatly ordered world and shook it upside down and reordered everything. You were the one thing I didn’t believe that existed in this world. A kind heart. You looked into me, saw the venom and didn’t flinch away. You didn’t let it poison you with bitterness and you didn’t let the fear lead into aggression. You saw me eye to eye and you had the gall to admire me. To admire the real me, behind the sparkly dresses, the one that was mean and cunning. You made me want to believe in a better world and take steps to create that better world. You gave me a goal, something to reach for, something that did not leave a bad taste in my mouth. You make me glitter brighter than any diamond that has ever been carried to me. You gave me the one gift no one else was brave enough to give. I will forever be grateful that the world proved me wrong and brought me the one thing I would have never known to yearn for. You will always be the fortune that I kept looking for my whole life.”

In the distance, another wolf answered the lonely howl. Soon third and fourth followed, then the entire pack came together as one, singing the song that had been sung for thousands of years in this valley, unchanged. It created a choir more beautiful than any choir or organ could have ever hoped to imitate, a wedding gift from the wilderness of Yukon itself to its two favourite children.    

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -Oh, wow! I made the entire chapter revolve around the idea that the two are getting married, and then they didn't actually manage to get married! Talk about false advertising. But, I originally thought about writing the scene where they get themselves to father Judge Williams (real person in Dawson during the time!) to get their marriage legalized, but then decided against it. Scrooge and Goldie were not going to have any kind of ceremony, expect their private one in White Agony, so writing about more paper work and legal matters seemed redundant.  
> -I am not entirely sure about the legal procedure concerning marriage licences in Canada during the latter half of 1800-century. I took my research all from this site :https://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/love-and-marriage/031001-5100-e.html What I do know, is that only one guarantor would not have been enough to actually get a marriage licence. Sorry Scrooge, your antisociality is working against you on this.  
> But then again, nobody comes to this fic wanting to read essays about historical legal matters, so whatever.  
> -On wedding rings: the idea of two wedding rings, worn by both the husband and the wife, would have been a strange one during the times. Two rings got popular only during the world wars, when soldiers wished to have something to remind themselves of their wives, when they were sent to war.  
> -I take the chapter names from the songs I have listened when I write, because I tend to listen dominantly only one song per chapter, so I can easily get back to the mood of the chapter when I pick it up again. This chapters name comes from the song cold heart of Klondike by Tuomas Holopainen. You all know the one.


	6. Chì mi gun dàil an t-àite san d'rugadh mi

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cuirear orm fàilte sa chànain a thuigeas mi  
> Gheibh mi ann aoidh agus gràdh nuair a ruigeam  
> Nach reicinn air tunnachan òir

The wait was one of the longest in Matilda’s life. She knew that staring at the empty road, fidgeting, would not bring her brother back any quicker, but she couldn’t help it. Every few minutes she would stand up tiptoes, craning her neck in hopes of seeing any sign of the post carriages in the road. It had, after all, been years since she had last seen her brother, Scrooge, and his last visit to Scotland had involved him almost dying in a sword duel against the Whiskerwilles.

But now, her brother was not coming back to prevent some family catasthrophy. No, now he was coming back as a winner. He was coming back because he had finally found the wealth he had gone out to seek, and because he could finally return from his quest, back to home, back to his family.

For the longest time, it had only been the occasional letter, and lately the steady flow of money, being sent back to Scotland, that had even reminded the rest of the family that Scrooge still existed. Those papers had been the only touch that their entire family had had for their wayward son for so long that sometimes, to their shame, it was easy to forget that Scrooge had ever even been there. She and Hortense had grown up, mother had died and the world had changed from around them, and Scrooge had been somewhere unreachable. Matilda and Hortense had become a tightly knitted pair of siblings, and somehow their brother’s absence had stopped bothering them.

But surely, after all these years, Scrooge’s world had changed too. Would she even recognise her brother anymore? Would they still get along? What if Scrooge wouldn’t be Scrooge anymore, but would have changed to someone utterly alien? He had experienced so much, lived his entire life, far away from his family. What after all these years, they wouldn’t be able to be family anymore? What if all these years of awaiting the day that their family could be together once more, they wouldn’t be able to stand each other anymore? What if Scrooge had found himself a world that he preferred over his Scottish family living in the middle of nowhere, poor and unimportant.

He had even found a wife, what if he simply wouldn’t need his sisters anymore, and all of Matilda’s hopes of unified family would be shattered? It was a possibility, people changed. She, Hortense, and father had changed, so why wouldn’t his brother have done so?

From the distance, Matilda could spy a dot and a dust cloud moving closer and closer. The post carriage was finally here! Beside her, Hortense gripped on Matilda’s arm. “Look! There! There he finally is!!” If Hortense had any worries about the reunion, they could not be heard in her voice.

The post carriage came and went the same speed, leaving behind nothing but a cloud of dust, and without a feather of his brother being seen anywhere.

For a moment, Matilda’s stomach dropped, as all her anxieties seemed to be coming true. She worriedly looked at her father, searching for something. His father looked as baffled as she was.

Luckily, none of them had much time for panicking, as a slow wagon being pulled by two strong oxen, could soon be seen crawling behind the dust cloud of the postal carriage. A new, much more confused hope returned to Matilda. Hortense, was of course being Hortense.

“When Scrooge show’s his beak around here, I’m gonna punch it for making us wait!”

“Hortense please.” Their father scolded. “We haven’t seen him in years.”

“I _know!_ Why do you think I want to punch him, for making us wait and worry?” She muttered back, but quiet enough that their father choose to ignore her.

The oxen-wagon slowly climbed up the dusty road, and when it finally reached the small family standing by the side of the road, it became clear who was driving it. It was unmistakably their newly-made-millionaire brother, hiding under folds and folds of old, dusty travel-cloak.

It was nothing like Matilda had ever imagined meeting his brother would be like, and at the same time it was so unmistakably his brother. The no-nonsense face, as he made everyone know that he would not spend money on something as expensive as postal carriage, and the rough voice which instantly let Matilda know that her brother was hiding his true feelings under his gruff words. He was older true, but he was also just as Matilda remembered him.

The eight huge wooden barrels, tied to the wagon, that his brother had decided to drag all the way across the ocean were mysterious, but right now far more interesting was the person who sitting next to Scrooge.  She was wrapped in a same kind of colourless shawl as Matilda’s brother, hiding her effectively from the world. As the wagon stopped, she pulled her hood down and a shock of golden hair spilled free. It was the kind of vibrant shade that instantly drew one’s eye to it, and reminded them of sunlight, or gold. The next thing to get Matilda’s attention was her gaze, scanning the scene before her with sharp eyes. They were too far away for Matilda to make out their colour, but the intensity of her face was clear to see even from a distance. A stray thought hit Matilda like a howl of the devil’s hound heard in the middle of the night, freezing your bones for the longest second and muddying all your feelings with dread. What if she was bad news?

She had a shock of gorgeous hair, face to die for, and a certain sharpness in her that had surely attracted countless men before her brother. Scrooge had certainly seemed smitten in his writings, but what did they truly know of this woman who almost seemed to carry the cold winter nights with her, in her scrutinising gaze. Could someone like that truly love their brother? What if she would turn out to be a wicked one, someone who would bleed her brother dry from his fortune and trample his heart under her heels? Suddenly there seemed to be so many what ifs, that could go wrong for their family.

All these thoughts raced through her head in seconds, as Matilda looked on, while her brother threw off his travelling cloak and triumphantly stood up in a finest top-jacket that anyone in these parts had ever seen. The perfect picture of a millionaire. The one, and only, son of these hills that had conquered the world and succeeded.

“Yes! Scrooge McDuck! The richest duck in the highlands! Greetings, one and all! I return to you in triumph!”

If the McDuck family had hoped for the rest of the village to share their joy and pride, they were disappointed. This was a village where a theft of a sheep was remembered and begrudged for generations, and outsiders were treated with cold hostility in the best-case scenario. The circles were small and squares were not tolerated at all.

The rotten vegetables soared a fast trajectory over Matilda’s head and hit Scrooge straight in the beak. A nasty splatter could be heard as more rejects from various vegetable soups made their acquaintance with Scrooge’s body. With the vegetables, came the insults from the gathered group of gawkers and busybodies.

“Ye Stook-up mugwump! Thinkin’ t’coom back here from traipsing the world over!”

“Mister Big Mucky-Muck! The highlands were nae good enough fer ya!”

“Take off! Who needs ya!”

One of the louder assailants was silenced by a returned tomato straight to mouth. He went down instantly, coughing up his sudden tomato intake into the grass.

“The next one to throw a single thing, is going to have this cucumber showed so far up their-!”

Matilda would not have believed that a lady dressed in a tailor-made, gentle blue, fashionable dress and face worthy of a song, would have known such foul language, but the vivid imaginary had brought a blush up to even the roughest men hanging in the crowd. Matilda could feel her face heating like a furnace, listening to some of the more creative threats that Scrooge’s pretty wife was coming up with.

If Scrooge had not recovered, the crowd might have stayed, mesmerized by the foreign beauty promising to do unspeakable things involving both vegetables and their nether regions. Scrooge however did manage to peel the lettuce from his eyes and promptly threatened to buy of the entire village and chase all of its inhabitants all the way to England.  

The whole spectacle was over in minutes, leaving behind only the McDucks, and an assortment of smashed vegetables littering the ground.

“Are you all right Scrooge? That wasn’t a very nice thing to say to those people.” Matilda finally piped up, slightly disturbed by the straight up unashamed meanness that her brother was capable of nowadays. The Scrooge she knew, would never had stooped to threatening his neighbours, just because they were being rude.

“Girl, that was much nicer than any of those people deserved, and nothing more than what we haven’t dealt with before.” The woman with golden hair sneered, dropping down to the ground next to Scrooge, still holding the cucumber like she was just waiting for someone to come back and present her with a place to strategically relocate the green vegetable. Matilda felt suddenly again like a young girl, even if she resented the way Scrooge’s new wife had used the word ‘girl,’ when addressing her.

Hortensia had never had the same problems with propriety as Matilda, and aimed her legendary temper upon the ice queen that had descended on amongst them.

 **“Don’t** you **dare** to ‘girl’ my **sister** , Scrooge’s wife or not!”

The woman blinked once, almost surprised, like she hadn’t even considered that her cutting tone could offend those around her.

“Hortense, don’t go around wagging your beak at Goldie!” Scrooge spat out, all ruffled and ready to start a good old family fight. Luckily this family still had one sane member, their father, who cleared his throat in a way that everyone found themselves flushed and embarrassed to be caught fighting on this day that was supposed to be about family getting back together.

“Sorry, pa.”

“Sorry pa.”

“I apologize Mr. McDuck.”       

 “Now, now. I understand that we are all tired after all this travelling and excitement, but Scrooge, come here. We have missed you terribly.” Scrooge was pulled into a tight embrace by his father, an embrace that lasted a spot longer than usual. Matilda could see Scrooge digging his beak tight into the nook of father’s neck. He also subtly had to dab the corner of his eye with his sleeve after father finally let him go.

Hortense was next, jumping up and latching into her big brothers neck. “I can’t believe that you’re really here.” Just like was typical for Hortense, she could easily switch between extreme emotions without getting a whiplash, that those around her were prone to get trying to follow her mercurial moods. For Hortense, her earlier ire was already forgotten as she smothered her brother in a bone-crushing hug.

Matilda followed her sister’s example and joined the sibling hug. All three of them tightly tangled together, it made Matilda almost remember back to the old days when they had all shared the small bed in Glasgow. Matilda could have bet that Scrooge was remembering it too; the cold nights spent in that bed, tangled together for warmth.

The three eventually detangled from each other, but the warmth stayed, deep where it wouldn’t be taken away anytime soon.

“Ah, family,” Scrooge hurried to introduce his wife. “this is Goldie. You already know from my letters, but she is my lovely wife.”

Fergus smiled kindly at the blonde woman, who had observed the family union in silence, and gestured with his hand for her to come closer. “C’m here, my lass. Let me take a good look at our newest family member.” Goldie stepped up, but not without some hesitation, and needed a discreet push from his husband to get her moving. The woman who just moment ago had looked so cool and menacing, in Matilda’s eyes, now looked much more hesitant and humane.

“Ay, our boy has found himself a true beauty, that I can see right away. I hope that my boy has been treating you right.” Fergus said with a twinkle in his eyes, holding his new daughter-in-law’s hands in his owns.

Goldie shrugged a bit awkwardly and replied, “Oh, you know Scrooge. Acts tough, is pure cotton-fluff underneath.” Her smile had a fondness in it that could not be faked. Clearly Matilda’s fears had been unfounded after all.

 Founding some of her confidence back, Goldie smiled at Fergus more widely. “You have raised a fine son, Mr. McDuck.” She winked into Scrooge’s direction as she said this, and was rewarded by seeing a smile tug on Scrooge’s beak, even as he rolled his eyes at her.

Fergus’ own smile also widened, seeing the comfortable affection between his son and his bride. “Papa, please.” He insisted sternly. “I wouldn’t have my daughter-in-law call me anything else.”

“Papa.” Goldie tasted the word in her mouth like it felt somehow unfamiliar coming out from her lips.

Now that Matilda could see Goldie closer, she could see that Her eyes were green, and slightly unsure. Matilda could also see how Scrooge had shifted to stand next to Goldie, his shoulder faintly brushing hers. A small smile flickered over Matilda’s beak. It looked like Scrooge wasn’t the only one who had tougher outside and softer inside.

Together the small family started to fill the seats of the wagon, preparing for the journey to the castle, Hortense already peppering the couple with questions about America.

 

“Hey ma.”

If he had been in any other company, Scrooge would have felt ashamed over how broken his voice sounded. Luckily he wasn’t in any other company, and Goldie’s hand was warm in his, as they both faced the gravestone.

“I’m sorry I didn’t come back sooner. To see you before- before. If I had known about your health… I hope you knew that. I hope that you knew how much I missed you every day and every night out there in the wide world.”

A small tug on Goldie’s hand was luckily all that was needed to tell his wife of the coldness that was eating through his chest and the weakness that was invading his body. Goldie stepped closer, pressing herself tight against him, offering her warmth and strength, where it was needed.

“Hello, Mrs. McDuck. I’m your new daughter in-law. Officially introducing myself. I hope I will pass your requirements as a newest McDuck, and a wife to your son.”

“Of course you do. Right Ma? I managed to find myself the greatest woman in the whole world, bet you didn’t think your scrubby shoe-shiner boy could have done so well for himself. She’s too good for me, I know. Don’t tell her, she might realise it.” Scrooge’s voice was wet, but no tears had yet made themselves out of his eyes. He had spent too long being the toughest of the toughest that now he found himself incapable of proper tears.

“Don’t listen to your son. I would be a blind fool to leave the best husband any woman could ever ask for. You raised him well. Thank you. Without you, I wouldn’t have this amazing man in my world today.”

These were the moments he was infinitively glad to have another body against his own. To have Goldie’s steadfast presence with him on these familiar hills, in this unfamiliar situation. Of course his thoughts kept circling back and back to how he would have given anything to have mother here, greeting him. To be able to introduce his wife to his mother’s smiling face.

But life was not made out of wishes and dreams. It was made of cold winds and cruel truths. Which was why it was so good to have someone there with him, someone who stood with him in front of that gravestone, facing the cold wind with him.

 

Goldie had been around a lot and seen many things, but seeing an honest-to-god medieval castle was breath-taking. It rose from the hills and swamps proud and strong, just like its owners were. Knowing that Scrooge’s family owned a castle was not the same as _knowing_ it, like she now knew. Now the castle was no longer an abstract conversational piece, but a real stone building growing in size as their entourage got nearer.

“Welcome to the castle McDuck. From now on you can start calling it your home.” Said Fergus with a smile in his voice. It was clear that the small clan of McDucks were getting all the enjoinment from getting an excuse to finally introduce their castle to an outsider. It must have been long since they had had true visitors to impress.

“Great, isn’t it? What do you think?” Scrooge eagerly questioned her.

He sounded younger. Goldie could almost imagine echoes of the young boy who had grown up in here in her husband’s voice, as he tried to quell down the clear excitement.

“Well, it’s not like I have much to compare it with. It is my first time seeing a castle.”

There was a shadow of a pout trying to make it into her husband’s face that softened Goldie’s usual coolness. “Of course it is great. It’s grand and beautiful and exciting and you will have to give me a tour, because I have rarely wanted to do something more than to explore it to its last nook.”

“I will. You will know it better than your own pockets in no time.”

“Okay, lovebirds. The ride is over, we need to start unpacking. C’mon brother, stop making moony-eyes and tell us what is in these barrels!” Hortense interrupted the couple. They had finally reached the courtyard, and were unloading themselves from the cart.

“Hortense! You little-“

“So, how did you and Scrooge meet?” Matilda butted in. It was becoming clear to Goldie that it was her, who seemed to act as a buffer between the two more temperamental siblings. “He has sent us so many letters, but never told us any details!”

“Yes, Scrooge! You could have told us a bit more about your girl. A wife no less! We weren’t prepared at all!” Hortense joined the interrogation. The words seemed to be directed to her brother, but Hortense’s eyes were turned expectantly towards Goldie.

“Believe me, no amount of preparation is enough for meeting Goldie for the first time.”

“Shut UP Scrooge! We are trying to talk to you wife here!” Hortense snapped at her brother, with practised ease of a younger sibling well wersed in the art of annoying their older sibling.

“Why you little, I come home after all these years-“

The sisters ignored their brother skilfully, while Fergus helped Goldie down from the carriage. The old man had a smile tugging his beak.

“Shut up! Anyways miss Goldie. How did you meet our brother?” Hortense attached herself at Goldie’s side, her words perfectly civil when addressed to Goldie, as opposed when addressed to Scrooge.  

“And how did you ever agree to marry that knucklehead?” Matilda joined in on the gentle teasing.

“I can hear you both loud and clear!” Scrooge protested, but in vain.

“Nobody cares! Sorry, our brother is an idiot.” Hortense waved her brothers attempts to gain some respect in this conversation away with one hand.

“Yes, I have come to know him quite well.” Goldie couldn’t help but quip back, silently laughing on the inside at the flat look that Scrooge gave her, hearing her words. Rolling his eyes, He seemed to have finally accepted the fact that he had become the minority party in the politics of his own family.

“I bet your meeting was just like in those stories. Did he save your life? Was it love at first sight? What were you doing in Dawson? Do you have family there? What did they think?” Matilda eagerly enquired. Goldie felt awkward to say at least, seeing her innocently wait for an answer that would not include criminal activities of any kind.

“Well…um, I don’t have any family in Dawson.” Goldie slowly started, unsure of how to proceed from there.

Scrooge relocated himself to Goldie’s side immediately, the same nervousness showing in his eyes that was in hers. This was Scrooge’s family. Their opinion mattered.

“She had a business there. The first one in Dawson to succeed. Sold food and other necessities to the miners who arrived to Dawson to dig gold.” He went in to continue the story.

But they were Scrooge’s family, and if that family had managed to turn out someone like Scrooge McDuck, surely they had to be good people. People who would not start to judge and scorn her in the expense of their brother’s and son’s happiness.

“I had a saloon, where I worked as a dancing girl. Scrooge came for a coffee, after hitting the richest gold vein in Yukon.” She decided to blurt out the truth. Well, at least part of the truth. Honesty could be achieved in small chunks too, and maybe it was better to leave the more damning parts of the story for later.

“A dancing girl?” the voice of Matilda was a tad hesitant. Goldie held her breath. It was a rural village. The view of morality was much tighter in communities like these than in the wilderness of Yukon.

“Yes.”

“Well, that’s… that’s quite exciting actually. Like in those more exotic stories. A real dancing girl. Did you have sparkly dress and all?” Any hesitation that she might have had disappeared from her voice, overtaken by the earlier happiness.

“I still have it with me, and yes, it is very sparkly.” Goldie answered with a breath of relief.

“Ooohh! I want to see!” Matilda got stars in her eyes.

“Me too! Do you think I could try it on!?” Hortense joined her sister in her excitement, grabbing Goldie by the arm.  

“Sure, why not.”

“Yay! Where is it?!”

“Girls! No one’s trying anything on before everyone’s had some supper. I apologize, the girls get excited easy. Come along lass, I’ll show you to the kitchen. I would give you a tour but I think we all need some food first. Come along kids!” Fergus put halt on his over-excited daughters’ plans, gently guiding his entire family towards the kitchens and the food waiting for them.

 

“I’m never eating haggis again.”

“You’ll grow to like it.”

“No.”

“It’s a bit of an acquired taste, but it’ll grow on you.”

“No.”

“Really. Are you sure. Entirely sure.”

“Absolutely sure.”

 

Goldie wasn’t sure what had woken her, but now she felt almost electrified, not at all like person should waking up in the middle of the night. Whatever it had been that had waken her, had not affected Scrooge. His sleep was undisturbed and peaceful.

The smart thing to do wold have been to go back to sleep, or at least lay back down under the covers. She didn’t do that. She could have sworn that something had moved in the doorway. Careful to not disturb her husband, she slipped off into the chilly night air of the castle. There was a queer feel in the air. One of utter safety, even if she was getting up to wander about in an unfamiliar castle in the middle of the night.

But Goldie was still Goldie, and she slipped her small handgun under her white nightgown. She was no heroine for a gothic novel, she was too old and too hard for the role of the innocent maiden.

But what Goldie lacked for the role of a gothic protagonist, the castle made up by being the perfect setting for one. The old stone walls danced with shadows cast by Goldie’s candelabra. It was not entirely silent, for Goldie could always make up the faint noise that had roused her in the first place, the murmur of barely heard whispers, and the dying footsteps. Noises so far away that she must have imagined them, but still the midnight compelled her to wander and to search for the voices. She should have been more vary, more ready to face the intruders, but she wasn’t. She found herself unable to feel fear or anger. The calm surrounded her, almost like a blanket.

The armours stood at attention and the ancient murals hung heavy with stories. These were walls that for the first time had made Goldie understand Scrooge’s need to protect the honour of his name. He wasn’t just stroking his own ego, but protecting this whole idea behind his name. Goldie could not imagine carrying this entire castle, with its centuries old tapestries, on your shoulders around the world, the way Scrooge had done. Goldie’s name had always encompassed only herself; she had no ties tying her to anything bigger than what she had made herself to be.

Well, until now. Because now her feet had taken her to the grand entrance hall, where the moonlight illuminated the dust still gently floating in the air. She was now a McDuck too, this was now part of her responsibility as well.

The dust floating in the air almost formed a visible outline of a duck. Goldie could almost see it take form in the periphery of her vision, and the voices had turned into impressions of whispers. Somewhere in the back of her mind Goldie thinks that she must be dreaming.

“If there is anyone in here, that isn’t supposed to be here, I would like to point out that I have at least one gun loaded and easily in reach.”

Silence greets her, and she isn’t surprised. She wasn’t truly expecting to find robbers out here. “All right then.” She says and isn’t even sure why she keeps talking out loud. Echoes of her own voice are the only answer she gets, as she slowly circles the main hall. Out of all the areas of the castle, it is the most ancient feeling. Mostly this illusion surely comes from the fact that the big area has been the most difficult to preserve and the moonlight is free to travel through the holes in the ceiling. This is not a place that has been lived in for centuries.    

The idea of returning to bed, to Scrooge, plays constantly on the back of her mind, but never quite loud enough that she would listen. Instead she lets her feet move her across the old stone floor, making a loose circle in the hall.

When she closes her eyes, she can almost feel the faint touch of brushing against someone’s shoulder in a crowded dance floor. There is suggestion of music in her ears, and there are the faint echoes of footsteps all around her.

When she opens her yes, there are only cobwebs and old rotting tapestries.  

“Honestly.” She mutters to herself. “I’m not a silly girl anymore.”

This kind of wandering in search of ghosts might have enthralled her, when she had been a silly teenager reading Le Fanu, but she was supposed to know better now.

Still, spotting an old candleholder in one of the niches in the walls, she takes one of the half-burned candles from her three-armed candelabra, and leaves the small light burning in the shadows of the hall.

 

_Wasteful, wasteful. Do you know the cost of candles these days? That was a wasteful action._

_Now, now, she means well. And sometimes respect is even more important than thriftiness._

_Bah, these Americans, I do not trust them, never have._

_In your time, America wasn’t even found yet._

_Well, that depends on who you ask now, aye?_

_Your Viking friends made up those stories, don’t be fooled._

_Who are you calling a fool, fool?!_

_Fellows! Let’s not get carried away. We are here for the girl._

_The girl is fine, there have been better, there have been worse._

_Yes, but can she be a McDuck?_

_Why of course. Didn’t you see. She did choose to leave behind the shortest one of the candles. There’s respect in her, but also thriftiness. A good amount of sensible thriftiness after all._

 

Hortense made another spin, giggling hysterically, and the feathered edges of the ballroom dress rose with the movement. To the younger girl, Goldie’s glittering dress was just slightly too big, but it did not stop the two sisters enjoying their spin trying the garment on. They were both girls used to simple and modest clothes that were both easy to work in, and satisfied the need for propriety. To them, putting on entertainer’s costume was just that, trying out a costume.

“You look ridiculous.” Scrooge scoffed from chair he was sprawled on, looking at his sister’s antics with mixed embarrassment and fondness.

“You looked ridiculous, failing at the highland games!” Hortense snapped back, her words slightly slurred. She did not have the same constitution to drinking that Goldie had gained in her life. It was long past midnight, and Fergus had already retreated to sleep, once he had nodded off against the table. But the younger McDucks could not settle down. They were electrified with the knowledge that they would be returning, or in the sister’s case entering for the first time, to America soon. So, they had celebrated long into the night in honour of the future.

“Don’t be mean to your sister.” Goldie tossed a pillow from their bed at her husband. As the night had carried on, the four of them had ended up meandering into Scrooge’s and Goldie’s room, where the two sister’s had finally gotten their wish to try on what had once been Goldie’s working clothes.

Matilda had looked slightly nervous wrapped in all that glitter and feathers, but Hortense was having the time of her life, working out just the way to make the hems swish and flick.

“That’s right!” She victoriously called. “Don’t be mean to me, Scrooge!”

“Mean?! I’m just stating facts.” Scrooge defended himself, and send the pillow that had been thrown at him to sail through the air, this time aimed at Hortense. Hortense screamed and dodged, and then launched herself at her older brother, beating him into submission with the pillow.

“Hey! Be careful with the dress!” Goldie called out for the two, watching as Scrooge lifted the screaming Hortense up in the air, while she still kept beating Scrooge over the head with the pillow.

“They act like they were both toddlers again.” Matilda sighed from where she had appeared at Goldie’s side, dipping the mattress slightly where she laid. “But it’s nice, you know…I missed their loudness.”

Goldie shifted a little, giving the other girl more space to snuggle against the remaining pillow. While Hortense had just gotten more energetic while the night progressed, Matilda was looking pretty beat.

“It’s nice to see the more childish side of him. He’s different here.”

Matilda snorted. “You mean more immature?”

“More carefree. And he does love this place.”

“Of course.” Matilda sighed again slightly melancholily. “We are McDucks, this is our ancestral home. That will never change. But- “, she continued with a more happy tone of voice, “ while the castle will be always our ancestral home, I’m sure that we will make a home in America too. “

Goldie, who had never really grasped the idea of a home in her life, only hummed in agreement.

“And find some handsome cowboys for us too!” Hortense laughed, as she dropped down to sit on the other side of the bed, face flushed and hair in disarray. Scrooge followed, pushing on his sister’s side as he made space for himself on the crowded bed. “Maybe Matilda. You are too terrifying for any cowboys to fall for you.” Scrooge teased Hortense and tousled her hair. Hortense stuck her tongue out and made a face.

“Well if _you_ found a wife-“ Matilda giggled, “It means that pretty much anything is possible in the Americas.”

“Yes.” Scrooge answered, in a wistful tone that looked far ahead into the future. “Anything will be possible, for us.”

They all believed it, with the unshakable faith of the adventurers looking far away into the horizon.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -chapter title and summary come from the gaelic song: Chì mi na mórbheanna. To see translations, you can go here:  
> http://www.omniglot.com/songs/gaelic/chimi.php


	7. Cheap Thrills

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The McDucks try to settle to America, and instantly cause a national incident.

The sky was blue, the air was hot, and the family trekking uphill in the beautiful weather were too preoccupied fighting to appreciate the fair day. In word, they had perfectly assimilated to start building their own American dream.

“Oh, Hortense get a grip! Losing your head over some duck you just met and only managed to have a fight with. Try to have some sense in you!” Scrooge continued scolding his feisty younger sister, who was currently uncharacteristically quiet and dreamy; sneaking glances over her shoulder at the farm that they had just left behind them.  

“Really Scrooge? I don’t think you have any ground to talk at all!” The fair-headed sister came to the other’s defence, feeling that Scrooge was being not only unfair, but also hypocritical.

“I have no idea what you are talking about.” Scrooge scoffed, feeling entirely justified in trying to reign in Hortense’s reckless bout of insanity, also known as a “crush”, towards the boy at the farm.

“You and Goldie were literally just at each other’s throats!” Matilda pointed out, frustrated at having to be the only sibling with any sense in this family.

Goldie, who had been trying to avoid the entire drama, send a dirty glance towards Matilda, feeling at least slightly betrayed. She didn’t want to be dragged into any nonsense between Scrooge and Hortense. “Don’t bring me into this! And Scrooge had it coming, he was being a stubborn idiot!”

“It is not my fault that the machine was built shabbily.”

“It is your fault that we didn’t have brakes!” Goldie snapped back at her husband, still seething that somehow he had decided that amongst all the extra features he didn’t want to pay for in his transport, was the way to actually stop the machine.

“You are literally doing it again!” Matilda butted in, waving her hands at both of their directions frustratedly.

“Doing what?” The couple answered at the same time.

“The thing where you fight yourself hoarse and then get cute and lovey-dovey.”

“I have never-!”

“We do not-!”

“Hortense! Back me up here!”

Hortense, who had not been paying any attention to the argument whatsoever, hearing her own name, distractedly turned her head towards Goldie, who had tried to gain her sister-in-law’s support.

“What-?”

“The point is.” Scrooge announced, his announcement being a bit undermined by the fact that he was still slightly flushed. “The point is that relationships should be built upon common sense and practicality, like, well, I mean it is true that me and Goldie had bit of a rough start, but eventually, actually it got worse there for a spot-“ His sisters were giving him a faintly amused and greatly pitying looks. He probably should have thought a bit beforehand before bringing up his own relationship as an example.

“What I mean is that our relationship was not just a product of a misplaced passion of one moment-well,- In some ways- I’m losing this conversation aren’t I? “

“Scrooge, we lost this conversation before it even started. We have no grounds to ever give anyone advice on relationships, with our history.”

“Never mind all that, we are finally here.” Scrooge saved himself from the conversation, pointing to the old, crumbling, wooden fortress that now stood before them, and not looming over them.

The fortress had probably been impressive in its day, but right now it was slowly falling apart, the wooden beams looking like they might fall down any moment. It would have to be taken down entirely, before anyone could even imagine building anything lasting in this hill.

“Well. No wonder you got it so cheap.” Matilda remarked, assessing the ruins with a mix of disgust towards the visible mould and fear of getting a crumbling log crashing on her head.

“Aye, but the land under it is well worth it. Let’s go then, and see it from the inside.”

While Scrooge and his sisters made their way inside the building, Goldie stayed behind, looking down on the small village now in clear sight for them. Calling the settlement a village might have been a bit of an overstatement, as a loose collection of about dozen houses would have been more accurate. The farm that their company had crashed into, was clearly the biggest thing around for miles.

It was different than anything that Goldie had ever experienced, but she felt hopeful. It was no New York and no Dawson, but it wasn’t a village stuck in time either, like Scrooge’s home in Scotland. It was a budding town and it might be even possible that in time Scrooge and Goldie could influence in which direction it would grow in future.

The quiet moment of pondering was broken by a string of curse words yelled by a familiar voice of her husband. She was not surprised. His husband had many great qualities in him, but diplomacy was not one of them.

“You got outwitted by three kids?” Goldie couldn’t help but comment, seeing the three adolescents carry their enormous book down the hillside and her stomping close on their heels, seething, and slopping wet.

“Those sneaky devils have obviously been trained in tricks and traps by some veterans of dirty warfare.” Scrooge grumbled, trying in vain to wring the water off the coattails of his red jacket. He was following the descend of the children with caution, that three adolescents did not probably deserve.

 “You just can’t hold a diplomatic discussion to save your life.” Goldie exchanged a knowing look with Hortense and Matilda, who had followed behind Scrooge, dry and amused. 

“You can’t negotiate with children.” Scrooge grumbled, entirely genuine.

“Well you obviously can’t.” Goldie rolled her eyes.

“AAH! Could you hold your quips back for a one minute! We have better things to do!”

“You make it so easy.” Goldie chuckled, patting Scrooge’s shoulder and wincing slightly at the feel of cold, and wet cloth under her fingers. “But you are right, you do need to get going, if we want to have the money up here before tonight.”

“You mean we?” Scrooge eyed Goldie suspiciously. He had a feeling that the “innocent and good intentioned wife” was about to make an appearance. He never trusted this particular persona of his wife.

“Oh Scrooge.” The wide eyes and high voice did indeed belong to the “innocent and good intentioned wife.” The one that always had such well-reasoned explanations for what she was about to do.  “One of us has to stay here, so they can get to know the locals and negotiate the prices for food and necessities.”

“I can do that!” Yelled Hortense, newfound fire in her eyes. She bounced to Scrooge and Goldie, eyes sparkling and hands clasped together in front of her. A stray thought wandered through both Goldie’s and Scrooge’s minds, wondering if they had ever been that obvious about their feelings, or looked that ridiculous.

“Absolutely not!” Scrooge put his feet down on the issue. ”Who knows what you would be doing the entire time, with that farmboy, if we left you here alone.”

“I think I would know.” Matilda muttered to herself and rolled her eyes. “And you.” She stepped up to Goldie, her voice low. “Don’t think that I don’t know how this is just an excuse to sneak away from the hard work.”

“I have no idea what you are talking about. Now I am going down there to buy us some supper, and listen to the local rumour mill for any useful information. I’ll see you around in few hours.” Goldie sing-songed and made a tactical retreat downhill.

Matilda’s look could have curdled milk, but Goldie ignored it. There was no sin in occasional slyness.

 

“Back already?” Elvira greeted Goldie, from where she was feeding the hens.

“hmm. My husband and his sisters have gone back to the train station to fetch the rest of our belongings.” Goldie leaned against the fence, watching the sturdy matron work.

“Deary. You haven’t come here empty handed like the most then?” Elvira Duck smiled and joined her new neighbour at the fence. In a farming community, the size of Duckburg, anyone living in a ten-mile radius from you, was counted to be a neighbour.

“Well, it depends on how you look at it.” Goldie hedged. Explaining to strangers that they were carrying eight full barrels of cash, and nothing else, with them was not something she wanted to bring up with strangers in a conversation this casually. “However, we do need to buy food and other necessities that we need for living. We don’t really have any real “things” with us.”

“Well, we will be glad to feed you for now, and there is some room in our upper floor-“ The elder woman explained with a friendly, but practical tone, clearly already making plans for how to accommodate the new people who would need space in her home.

“Thank you, but that won’t be necessary. I believe that we will spend the night up there.” Goldie stopped Elvira from making any unnecessary plans for them.

“Up there? There is nothing in there, you would have to sleep under open sky.”

“I’m sure we will manage. We would feel better sleeping near the- well our belongings that we have with us.” Goldie smiled the “innocent and good intentioned” smile, hoping that Elvira wouldn’t ask Goldie to specify what exactly those belongings were.

Luckily, Elvira let it go, either not interested, or feeling that it wasn’t her place to pry. “Suit yourself, but any friends of Casey are always welcome in our farm.” She briefly took Goldie’s hand on her own, and squeezed it. Goldie felt slightly awkward, but smiled through the whole business of friendliness.

“That’s very kind of you, I’m sure we will enjoy buying our food from a reliable family as yours.”

“Oh no bother”, Elvira waved Goldie’s words aside with firm flick of her wrist. “of course friends will always eat for free in our farm.”

Goldie sighed, and leaned back against the fence. “Oh Elvira. I appreciate the sentiment, and because you seem like a true friend, I am going to give you some free advice when it comes to us McDucks. Don’t ever make an offer like that, you will live to regret it.”

“But-“

“I’m speaking as a true friend here.” She looked Elvira in the eye, trying to convey how much an offer of lasting free meals for a McDuck would soon become a regret for anyone making that offer.

The matter got dropped when the second son of Elvira appeared from behind the barn and visibly perked seeing one of the newcomers leaning on the fence surrounding their hen-pen.

“Ma-m! You’re already back. Did the others come too?” He tried to question casually, and failing. His eyes kept flicking around, searching assumedly for any signs of curly brown hair. 

“If you are asking whether Hortense is here, the answer is regrettably no. She went with my brother to the train station.” Goldie put the poor boy out of his misery.

“OF COURSE I WASN’T ASKING ABOUT THAT LOUDMOUTHED HARPY! WHY WOULD YOU THINK THAT!!”

Elvira gave her son an evil eye that shut him up immediately, but the commotion had already attracted the rest of the family to the scene.

“Really Quackmore? Already shouting at a lady. As I would have expected from a brother like you.” The drawling voice belonged to the distinctively attractive daughter, with golden curls a touch darker than Goldie’s. Dora was her name, if Goldie remembered correctly. As she walked, a sudden gust of wind grabbed a coat that someone had left hanging on the end of a wooden post, flying it neatly to cover a puddle of water on her path. Goldie blinked. How incredibly lucky that was.

“Well nobody asked you!” The hot-headed brother spat back at his sister. It seemed to be a lively family that lived under these roofs. Seeing their comfortable interaction and clear love between the family-members gave Goldie a slightly fistful feeling. She knew it was silly, she had a family now, but still somewhere she always felt awkward around such pure and simple family units. They were so far away from her world and experiences.

“Well I won’t bother you any longer, I just came here to ask for the local apothecary.” Goldie excused herself, a little awkwardly.

“Neighbours are never a bother, but I can show you the apothecary and the local smithy both.” Elvira offered, letting himself out of the hen pen, and thrust the bucket in her hands to her daughter. “There Dora, if you have time to tease your brother, you have time to feed the turkeys. Quakamore, aren’t you supposed to be mucking the stables?”

 “Thank you.” Goldie straightened up and brushed her skirts, watching the two siblings scatter of hurriedly, clearly taking no changes with their mother’s temperament.

 

“What the-!”

Goldie offered a last quick smile to the clerk at the apothecary and rushed outside. The disbelieving voice of Elvira Duck shouting on the streets did not promise anything good, whatever it was that was happening outside.

What was going on outside, as Goldie soon observed, seemed to be total war. The sight that greeted her was so unexpected, that she could do nothing but join Elvira in gaping beak open at the scene in front of them. The small river, snaking near the town, had become the host to the US navy and the army with cannons and cavalry. And for some unfathomable reason, they were stepping down and heading towards Killmotor hill. Their hill.  

“Elvira. I’m going to need a horse right now!” Goldie finally forced out of her mouth, blinking rabidly. Her bag full of groceries, and other necessities, had fallen to the ground, forgotten.

 

The horse that Elvira had borrowed her was used to working on the fields, not being ridden on. Goldie didn’t care. She was in a hurry and she would have ridden a goat if need to be. But the Clydesdale that she had been given suited her more than fine, the huge horse galloping like an earthquake towards the forming crisis by the foot of the hill.

The noise of her horse’s hooves was completely overtaken by the thunder of cannon shots, as they one by one sailed through the air into the wooden fortress up the hill. If she could have been sure that Scrooge and his sisters weren’t still inside, she might have enjoyed the fact that the army seemed to be doing all the deconstruction work for them. Somehow, she still doubted that the US army had decided to show up just to help them clean up their land.

Goldie urged her steed onwards, straight into the mass of soldiers surrounding Killmotor hill. “You, soldier boy!” She screamed to be heard over the general noise, while mercilessly forcing the huge work horse into the crowd. Far under her, a soldier who had lost his footing stared upwards the horse leg standing next to his face. The hoof was easily the size of his head. “Ma´m.” He squeaked out, hoping that the horse wouldn’t get restless. Goldie peered down from her seat at the unfortunate soldier boy. “You better give the quickest situation report of your life soldier!” She barked out.

“There’s a mad-man in there, he’s dropping wooden towers on top of our necks! The president almost got mowed down by the north tower!” The boy, just barely an adult, stammered out.

“The president.” Goldie repeated, focussing her gaze now to where the arrow-head of troops were concentrated on. squinting, she could see both the man obviously leading the charge, and the fact that someone was enthusiastically turning the fortress into a weapon. There were wildly rolling wooden logs barrelling down the hill, forcing the cavalry into making hasty movements to the sides, to make clear way to the poles to crash and trash down.

So the president had decided to come and force them out of their own land. That did not stand, would not be allowed to stand. The first rule of saloon keeping was that no matter how big and scary the man harassing you was, you did not back down. It just opened doors for smaller men to try their luck in the future. Also, Scrooge was obviously in there, he being the only one fierce and stupid enough to start fighting an army on his own, and he might be in danger.

Goldie’s vision narrowed down and fixed on the figure of the president of the United States. Pulling at the reins and digging her heels into the flanks of the animal, Goldie turned her steed around and dug her fingers into the coarse mane. The horse was not agile like the ones favoured by the army, but it was twice the size of any cavalry-horse and did not question its rider. The work horse pushed through the masses as easily as through a field of crop, slowly but steadily gaining speed. Even faster gained speed the realization of the men in front of her, that they could either remove themselves from her way, or the giant of a horse would remove them for her. It did not take but seconds, that a clear way had opened for her and her horse. The men noticed the direction she was headed too late, when there was nothing but few leaps of ground between her and the most powerful man in the nation.

One long leap of hooves later, and she could see how the president realized that something was wrong behind him, tried to turn his horse around, turned his own eyes to face Goldie’s, had his face twist in surprise, and momently in fear, as he realized that there would be an equine crash happening in seconds.

Goldie had her other hand still on the reins and the other curled around her trusty hand-gun.

The horses crashed together, the momentum sending both riders off of their seats. Goldie knew only that she had grabbed onto the president’s shirt collar and was not letting go. They rolled around for few times, ground and sky messing about in great jumble, before stopping Goldie on top and pointing the barrel of her pistol right at the president’s face.

“I would call of your army, if I were you.” She gasped out, as soon as she was able to get air in her lungs again. Her ankle throbbed meanly and she hoped it would be only twisted. Somewhere around them there were worried screams and the sound of guns being prepared.

“ And who the devil are you?!” gasped out the president, looking at the gun on his face like he had problems comprehending that it was really there.

“The army! OFF!”

“Hold! Hold the attack!” The president called out and Goldie had a nasty feeling that it was more out of surprise and curiosity towards this new twist, than that he would be truly ready and willing to just march away with his army, on their merry little way. She might not have thought this plan entirely through, as now the entire cavalry had their weapons pointed at her head and her ankle still throbbed like a bitch.

“Well this is a turn I would not have predicted. How delightful. May I have your name good lady?” the president enquired with way too chipper tone for someone who was being held hostage.

“What are you doing on my land?” Goldie hissed in return.  

“Your land?”

“Yes, my land.”

The president of the United States lifted his eyebrow and then slightly nodded towards the fortress. “And who is the person in there that assaulted me with a wooden tower?”

“That would probably be my husband.”

“Ah. I can see where the attraction between you two might lie.”

“Hands off my wife!” and speaking of her husband, now that cannonballs were no longer flying around, Scrooge had slipped through the main gate, and was wielding a wooden pole three times his size as a weapon.

“Good sir, I’m afraid I will get a lead poisoning if I move too much- Buck McDuck!” The president’s voice went from politely hostile to jovially incredulous as he got a better look at the duck threatening his army with a piece of lumber.   

Scrooge let the pole drop, and while the wooden beam rolled its way down the hill, making soldiers left and right jump frantically out of the way, Scrooge himself ran up to his once-friend and his right-now-wife.

“You’re the rancher from the Badlands!” He exclaimed, stopping near the two, smiling broadly.

Goldie confusedly looked between the two men, who apparently knew each other. If all of this turned out to be a fever dream, she would not be surprised. “Wait what?”

“You are the president now?” Scrooge continued their happy reunion.

“So you are the owner of this hill!?“President Roosevelt hollered back.

“Wait what!?” Goldie added her two cents to the conversation. Somewhere on the background the soldiers shuffled on their feet awkwardly.

“Goldie let the man go! Why are you pointing a gun on his face?” Scrooge shooed his wife off from his friend, looking entirely too unconcerned with the whole debacle.

“For the same reason you were throwing towers on him just a moment ago.” Goldie seethed, entirely unamused with everything. “What do you think genius! Are we under an attack anymore or not?!”

“Of course not.” The president got back up, and dusted the dirt from his uniform distractedly, still smiling brilliantly. “This has been a misunderstanding. I will order my troops down immediately.”

Goldie holstered her gun and got up too, regretting the action immediately as her ankle reminded her once again of its injured state. Scrooge’s hands were immediately there holding her up, and from the state of those hands he wasn’t entirely unscathed either.

“Why didn’t you answer to my first threat?” Roosevelt frowned as he regarded his old friend. “I almost made a horrible mistake, thinking you were part of invading forces!”

“I was having trouble with-“ Scrooge didn’t get to finish his explanation, as a scream broke through the air.

“Scrooge!”

“Brother!”

“-with them.” Scrooge’s tone was fearful, as he finished his sentence, which was rare enough to make Goldie’s throat go dry. Looking up, they could see standing on the wooden fortress’ gate a man holding Scrooge’s sisters by their necks, smiling nastily under his moustache.

“Blackheart Beagle, you let my sisters go or I-“ Scrooge’s angry yell died out as Matilda whimpered under Blackheart Beagle’s grip.

“Or you what? You do nothing if you know what’s good for your pretty little sisters.”

Matilda might have been crying, but Hortense had a shadow over her face.

“Already forgot about the beagle boys didn’t you Scrooge?” Blackheart kept monologuing. “What a caring brother you are. Now, we will take these barrels full of money with us and not any one of you will move a muscle or-“

Or what? They never got to find out as Hortense McDuck had at that moment reached her limit. The woman, in who the entire fighting spirit of the clan McDuck had manifested in a way never seen before, was tired, aching, humiliated, tossed around, hungry, and people around her treated her like a sack of flour to be passed around. In a word, she was not amused.

The legend, that would be passed around in the national troops from that day on, does not tell of Scrooge McDuck and his valiant stand. It does not tell of the president and his willingness to go the extra mile to defend his country. It does not tell of Mrs. McDuck who managed to take the president hostage in a middle of the battle field. The legend tells of Hortense McDuck, the screaming goddess of destruction and retribution, who first took down Blackheart Beagle, beating the man to pulp, merciless to his screams. Who then managed to grab a broom and send rest of the beagle gang running like hell was on their heels, and who finally turned to face the cavalry of the United States, and armed only with a broom chased the entire army to the outskirts of Duckburg.

 

“I did not see that coming.” Goldie said dazedly.

“You have surrounded yourself with quite interesting women.” Theodore Roosevelt commented, watching his army disappear into the horizon.

“I might need to rethink how much I want to pay her for today’s work, just in case.” Scrooge nervously muttered, eyes wide as he rethought everything he had thought he knew about his youngest sister.

“Oh dear.” Matilda sighed. “Let’s hope that she doesn’t find that farm boy on her little hike. Who knows what stupid things she might do with her emotions high like this.”

(The farm boy managed to find her, prying her from chasing after the United States’ army, and distracted her with other things. The stupidity of these things can be debated on.)

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -short chapter is short before the long and painful one  
> -chapter title from Sia


	8. Opulence is the End

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When Zelda finally sent me a copy her husband's novel, signed and brand new, I laughed and laughed. It was a terribly funny book to me. The Great Gatsby and his silly little tragedies, and orgastics futures, and the inevitable tragedy of having so much money and nothing else.

_When we started conquering the world, we were young, we were naïve and we were romantics. We were romantics in how we believed that the world was an adventure that never ends, that somehow there would be a way to stay true to ourselves and to our ambitions both._

_From Calisota, we started our journey towards the future. After staying in the town for a year, we left Scrooge’s sisters in charge and started chasing the sun._

_In the beginning, we stumbled, several times. How could we not have? Scrooge knew how to mine. I knew how to sell. These skills were not enough, but we learned. We attended dinners and galas, made small talk with the old money during the evenings. During the nights, we met with the new money, in their much more lively outings, and most importantly very generous outings. Then, during the morning we would head off to inspect the mines, elbows deep in the ground, trying to work out whether the ground was rich or not._

_For the first few years we travelled together, still not confident enough without each other. I did not have the deep intuition and experience of Scrooge’s when it came to minerals, but Scrooge on the other hand did not have the knack for understanding people that I had. I knew what people wanted, who the rising stars were and who were desperate. I knew how to draw attention to myself, how to present myself in all my glittering glory, so that no one could doubt that we were nothing but the cream on top that deserved only the best deals._

_And maybe during those first few years travelling together, and leaving behind a trail of mines, factories, and business deals, we became too confident. We started seeing how our dreams materialised and in a very humane way, we only wanted more. More was easily attained by splitting up, starting to travel alone so that our paths only met in small hotel rooms, where the other was going south and the other north. I will not say that this was a wrong decision, because I doubt that even if we had stayed holding each other’s hand through the whole seven years, we still wouldn’t have made any wiser decisions. The problem with us was, that it was us._

_But during those seven years we were happy, ecstatic even. There was a feeling of accelerating speed in our lives and we enjoyed the wind in our feathers. I saw the world, I amused people in London, in Paris and left behind me hotels and opera-halls owned by the McDuck-Empire. When our lines crossed, me and Scrooge would spread our numbers on the hotel-room bed and watch how the numbers climbed higher and higher. We were never excessive in the way that other millionaires were, staying only in the cheapest places we could find and travelling sometimes amongst the hays, in dark and cold trains._

_And still, where there were no champagne or silk sheets, there were the times that we would, in the darkness of the night, fill the small hotel-room tub with coins and soak. Wasn’t that the epitome of wealth? It was a curious juxtaposition that followed us everywhere we went and, seemed to best sum up our life. Nights spend huddled together neck deep in golden coins, sipping tea in a room smelling suspiciously like mould and reading through stock reports in candle light. Knowing that next morning the other would aim for the diamond mines in Africa and the other would secure the porcelain factories in china. It was our life and it was intoxicating. There was this amazing freedom in our life, not held back by anything in heaven or earth. What was there for us to fear? Nothing._

_Seven years. In those seven years, our ideals slipped from our fingers and we never noticed. We were so sure in our belief that we were nothing like the others. We were not like the robber-colonisers, making it easy from the work of others. We were nothing like the sleazy businessmen in wall-street that had inherited their money and thought nothing of cheating on contracts. And most importantly, we were nothing like the married couples that we so often met, who distrusted each other, made each other’s lives miserable in petty power struggles, who had no passion, only ever-lasting properness. Maybe we told this each other too many times, so we stopped looking if this was true anymore and just blindly believed that it must be true, for how could we be anything else than our ideals. The cracks were there; we just did nothing to fix them._

 

 “It’s not like I lied, just left out some details. He’s a crook anyway, deserves a taste of his own medicine for a change.”

“Are you sure Goldie? If a word gets out our reputation could be-“

“It’s fine. It’s not like I’m going to make a habit out of it.”

“You’re right. And he did deserve it.”

 

“Scrooge!”

“Hmm. Oh! There you are.”

“You left me behind. With those thugs!”

“Oh. I guess. I trusted you to take care of yourself.” Scrooge’s eyes never left the barrel of oil in front of him, the black gold of this new world with the rising automobile industry. “We are going to make millions with this field.” He continued, dipping one finger into the black pool, as oily and dark as Goldie’s unsaid words were.

 

“Aren’t you laying it a bit thick there?”

“That man is stupid as a boot, I have to. He is not going to get the message if I flirt subtly. Why? Are you jealous?”

There was a beat of silence, where you could hear the sound of conversation streaming from the inside the mansion, mixing with the sound of night birds singing near the balcony.

“No, of course not. Getting the mining rights is the most important thing here.”

The hesitant question almost left Goldie’s beak, but not quite. Their host was throwing glances into their direction from through the great glass windows. “Back to business then.” She said and threw a quick smile at her husband before gliding back inside. It had been a silly question anyway, of course Scrooge knew how much she loved him and that she flirted only when it would help them secure money.

 

“I’m fine!”

Her husband was not fine; she could see it. Scrooge of course refused to say what had happened in Vienna, but if the twitchy manner and the slightly manic gleam in his eyes was anything to go by, it had been bad. Goldie wished that they had been alone in some less noisy place than the train station that they were, so that she would have had the time to coax the story out of Scrooge.

However, her train was leaving in minutes, taking her to Berlin, which she could not miss. They might lose a factory if she didn’t go. “Well, take care of yourself anyway, I’ll see you in Munich.” A quick farewell kiss and that was that. Goldie squashed the impulse to stay behind. They couldn’t afford to lose the factory for just personal reasons, and so they would just have to talk later.

 

The first letter from Gilda arrived to Duckburg five years after the McDuck’s had established themselves in there. Both Goldie and Scrooge were on their rare visits, Scrooge had been currently arguing with Hortense over whether hiring a secretary would be necessary in the future or not, when Goldie leafed through her mail and found the letter.

The letter was reasonably long with barely anything said, and made Goldie feel mostly torn. On the other hand, how convenient it was for Gilda to turn up again now that she had made it rich. On the other hand, she was her only living family.

“A letter from your sister? I thought you two didn’t speak to each other.” Scrooge narrowed his eyes, reading the letter over Goldie’s shoulder.

“So did I.”

“Well, if she is after the money, you can tell her to scatter!”

“Yes, thank you for that emotional support and cutting insight! When I need your opinion I will ask for it!”

 

_From then on, Gilda’s letters became frequent. I still didn’t know how to respond, so I didn’t. Yes, a coward’s way out, but I had other matters on my mind that left me little time to ponder on past. There was an empire to build for one, an empire that did not wait._

_So, I opened each letter, read it through once and then burned it. All of them had the same formula, where Gilda tried to reconcile, asked me to meet her and alluded that she had faced struggles that had made her ashamed of her past actions. I didn’t exactly get rid of the letters out of spite or anger, I just kept putting off answering longer and longer, having no idea what to say._

 

“How was Panama?”

“Don’t!”

“You can’t stay angry with your sisters forever over one botched deal.”

“Watch me.”

“Scrooge, you’re being ridiculous! These things happen. We can’t always win!”

“One. I’m Scrooge McDuck, I absolutely can always win! Two. My sisters knowingly sabotaged my work! They decided to humiliate me, and they succeeded!”

“Your sisters love you. You would do well to remember it more often.”

“Maybe you should lecture me about my family when you get the guts to answer to one of those letters from your own!”

Goldie inhaled sharply and her hand twitched. Had they been on Klondike, that hand might have punched Scrooge McDuck straight to his smug beak. But they were not, they were in Calisota and Goldie just could not find it in herself to bring the violence up in place so civilized around them.

 

_A year later I would wish that I had acted on my instincts, and punched some sense into my husband that day. Maybe then things wouldn’t have escalated as they did._

 

There was still a scent of smoke in the air, days later. The black charcoal bones of the village kept standing here and there, defiant against Goldie’s stare. The witnesses to her husband’s crimes.

Conqueror. The word popped up in to her mind standing in the silence of the humid African air. Her husband was a conqueror now. They used the word empire when talking about the McDuck business and maybe they should have examined the dangers of that word more closely.

He is not an empire builder anymore; he is a conqueror. The difference in the words was the size of a village burned to the ground and looted. Just like that, they had stolen the home from an entire community of people. They will rebuild. Goldie told herself. it is not unforgivable; this can still be fixed.

But that would require Scrooge admitting to the need to fix anything.

He took away Their home, their security, their world. The thugs looted off everything that could be lifted off and burned the crops. How is that not unforgivable?

Remember when you used to do the same? The slimiest voice living in her head pointed out. Remember the miner who kept forgetting words because he was so in awe of your beauty. The one who had worked in his mine for the whole winter, alone, and who you robbed off all the gold he had with him. The one who carried his mother’s picture in his breast pocket. How you left him in the snow bank without a second glance. Don’t you think he felt the same when waking up and finding himself without money or gold? Or the countless others after him?

It’s not the same. The rules were different in the north. I didn’t rob children off their homes!

How do you know none of the miners you robbed didn’t have hungry children waiting at home?

Then they should have kept away from my saloon! Like Scrooge did!

Did you actually ever believe that he would keep his ideals for the rest of his life? Didn’t you always know that this would happen eventually?

But I didn’t want it to happen! Goldie concluded the mental argument in her head and turned from the proof of what his husband had done, to find said husband.

I should have been here, kept circling in her head. If only we hadn’t split up. I didn’t need to be at the auction, not really. I should have been here to stop this madness.

Or maybe you would have just joined him in the madness. The slimy voice pointed out. It’s not like you are any better than him.

 

Goldie was half afraid to find Scrooge’s camp empty. In the telegram she had urged her husband to stay put if he knew what was good for him, very strongly, but her doubt did not ease until he saw the familiar outline sitting on the travel mattress, staring at the lantern intensely. His posture looked almost pitiful, but Goldie knew that pity had no place in this conversation. Not that she was very good with pity anyway. Or empathy. Sometimes she mixed up those two. She wasn’t very good with either.

“Scrooge McDuck! I wouldn’t believe it if I hadn’t seen the ruins by myself. The king of Klondike, the hope of the clan McDuck. My husband! Burned down a village and stole land.” Goldie had always known how to make her voice appear cold, cruel, hurtful, but now she wasn’t aiming for any of those things. Her voice was pure natural scalding fury, but inside she felt only cold.

Scrooge turned and first said nothing. Just looked at his wife, like she didn’t belong in the scenery. Then he reared up, the conqueror clear to see, if you knew what to look.

“Don’t you dare! Don’t you dare to get all high and mighty on me! You! You who happily stole, and drugged, and cheated her way through life for decades before we even met! You really think that you have any say on whether I have to play fair or not!”

“I changed for you!” Goldie yelled back. “I believed in you and your dream! I saw a duck that was willing to bend the mountains to keep his morals clean and I fell in love with him and I became something better!”

“Well you don’t have to be anymore.” Scrooge spat. “You have my permission to be just as awful as you have always wanted to be. Don’t let me hold you down anymore.”

Goldie’s fingers snatched lightning fast around Scrooge’s beak and the tension in the air became as thick as the coffee in White Agony had once in happier times been.

“You don’t want to open that door.” She hissed, voice low and fingers tightening their grip. “You will not insult me like that and you will certainly not dismiss me like that!”

Scrooge snatched the delicate wrist and wrenched the hand away from his face, stepping closer at the same time. Their beaks were only inches from each other and their shadows in the light of that one small lantern were so much bigger than their real selves.

“Save me the theatrics Goldie. This is not about whatever melodrama you have decided to spin for yourself. I know you want to leave, so leave. I don’t want to hear what you have to say and you don’t want to be here and we both have better things to do!”

“You know what. At first I thought it cruel that your sisters had abandoned you here, but upon reflection I realise that they made the right choice. They are good people; they do not deserve to hear trash like that.”

“If I knew that you came all this way just to nag, I would not have waited.”

“Yes you would have.” They both knew this to be the truth. “You let your sisters go, because you know that they are better than you, better than either of us. But we, the two of us are equal. In good and bad. You have a decision to make now. Because whatever you choose to be from now on, I will match you whether you want it or not.”

The silence wrapped around them heavy and suffocating. It was the weight of the night where they both knew that they were standing on a precipice of their relationship. It should have been the time for soft words and admitting weaknesses, but there lay both of their greatest fault, in their inability to even after all these years to show vulnerability. It was not a matter of trust, for even then, the both of them trusted each other completely and blindly. It was a matter of habit, where neither of them could remember what it had been like to give up their strength. They had been smarter, harder, faster and stronger all their lives. Now they had before them a situation that they were not equipped to handle.

Pride won in the humid darkness. Pride that made Scrooge step back, and look at her wife with cold indifference.

“If you cannot face the reality of our task, of this world, maybe it would be better that you sailed your way back to Europe, to your gilded opera halls and _society_.”

Goldie’s heart snapped shut inside an iron case.

“Very well. My lawyers will contact you about our impending divorce proceedings in the near future.”

Scrooge was left standing in the heart of darkness, the world dangerously spinning around him, watching as his future ex-wife disappeared from his sight. In the distance the jungle birds kept making noises that almost sounded like cruel laughter.    

  

When describing the proceedings later, it would have been tempting to say that the lawyer who had taken the case would have felt that something exceptional was happening. That the man with short stature, slightly balding head and a weak moustache would have known that he was now handling the case that could potentially destroy the greatest business empire the world had, and would, ever see.

Of course, in reality there was nothing special in the air, there was no grandness or feelings of heaviness in the proceedings. The lawyer saw before him a petty squabble of a rich couple that had gotten tired of each other, like their lawyer saw day in and day out.

“Mrs. McDuck has informed me that she has agreed to terms of divorce that will let Mr. McDuck keep his fortune and his businesses.” The lawyer sounded slightly bored, which was misleading as in truth he was greatly bored, but had learned to filter most of his emotions out of his voice.

“I have. I only ask for three parts of the McDuck fortune, which compared to the rest are practically worthless.” Goldie knew that what she was about to do would assure the hate of the Duck sitting beside her for the rest of their lives. She wished there would have been some part of her that would have cared more. Some part that would have stopped her from going this extra mile just out of cruelty’s sake. But there wasn’t. The ice in her heart had grown too strong and now she only felt detached. If Scrooge’s anger was easily ignited, and like a roaring wild fire, then Goldie’s was a glacier. She was a spitfire when vexed enough, but there came the point in her heart where everything froze over and suddenly she found in herself the power to stab where it truly hurt, without truly feeling anything but faint amusement. It was a part of her that she wasn’t very proud of.

And now she was about to stab where it truly hurt.

Scrooge was silent sitting in the leather chair beside her, silent and still, waiting for the verdict.

“My first demand is a nugget of gold, exactly the size of a goose egg.”

Scrooge snorted with something akin to bitterness. “Of course it is.”

“That stone is hardly anything compared to all the mines that the McDuck Empire now owns.”

“I know. Which is why you are free to have it. I don’t care.” There was a crescendo of heartbreak barely audible in his voice.

“My second demand-.” Goldie started and felt like she was freefalling into an abyss. She was damning herself to a lifetime of guilt but the part of her that had made her the ice queen of Dawson was too strong. She kept going. “-Is the ownership of one castle McDuck in Dismal Downs, Scotland.”

There was an incredulous silence from Scrooge, who spent some seconds holding his breath, trying to keep from shattering from the impact of the words.

“You have no right to the family castle.”

“The castle’s monetary value is almost non-existent. You might even save some, when you don’t have to pay the taxes of the property anymore.”

“You have no right.” The heir McDuck spat out between his teeth, voice low and strangled. There was a pain in his chest, pain of something fragile finally breaking into thousand painful shards that would lodge in him for decades to come, until the only way to function would be to not feel anything anymore.

“You will give me the castle, or you will lose half of the fortune you have spent your entire life building. How long do you think it is going to take you to repair the damage?” Somewhere in the distance of her mind, Goldie could hear the voices of Scrooge’s two sisters spitting vile curses in her direction. She assured herself that she wasn’t taking their ancestral home away from Hortense and Matilda, but who knew what she would one day be capable off, in her spitefulness.

If Goldie would have looked, she would have seen the slight tremble that travelled through Scrooge, before the billionaire steeled and settled into more aggressive stance, leaning slightly forwards, staring only at the lawyer in front of the two ducks, his eyes narrowed slightly.

“I agree to the terms. What was the last thing you wanted?”

Goldie had now landed from her freefall. It was done, she had succeeded in hurting the man she had once promised to cherish and protect.

“One dime. 1875 Seated Liberty Dime to be exact. I’m sure you have one in your pocket right now.”

Scrooge wished he could have loathed Goldie at that moment, but she had always been and would always be, the one person that he just could not manage to look down to. Hate? Yes, maybe? In a burning, passionate way that always overlapped with desire, but from the moment he had laid his eyes on her, he had never been able to despise the woman, no matter how many times he had thought that he should. It did not matter how many times Goldie managed to hurt him, he always, always welcomed it. He was helpless under the tyranny of his heart that had decided to fall in love again, to the pair of frozen eyes in the middle of their divorce negotiations.

Scrooge’s hand hesitantly pulled the old dime tied on a string from his pocket. His constant companion around the world. It had been his every day reminder of why he was doing what he was doing, and how he should do it. It had been his strength for so long that parting from it now left a sensation of defeat in him. Still, what was one dime against an empire? He knew what he wanted, had made his choice thousands of times already by every unsent letter and every step he had taken away from his family. He had one coin at the time made his choice that he would either have everything or nothing, and right now there was no other choice but to throw the past away in order to secure the future.

Goldie O’Gilt was gorgeous in her cruelty as Scrooge pressed the dime into her hand. “I assume you will now leave me alone.”

Goldie looked as calm as ever. If there was a glitter of something in her eyes, Scrooge did not see it as he had already turned his head away. “Are we quite done here?”

“Yes, we are quite done,” the bored lawyer answered and started to shuffle papers in his desk, pulling out the ones that needed signing.

Few signatures later, and the two ducks disappeared into the cold night air, the smog of the city swallowing them and shielding them from each other’s eyes.

 

_When we started conquering the world, the world had seemed so large. Maps were full of unknown areas, and the distances were always too great when we were apart. Continents stretched under out feet and there were too many cities that needed visiting._

_Then how was it possible that after our divorce the world turned so infuriatingly small? We had both walked away from each other with plans to never bother each other again and suddenly the whole planet wasn’t enough to avoid crossing paths. I would happily forget my anger in the vibrant night life of London, and suddenly I would find out that my ex-husband had just checked in to the same hotel._

_I would pack my pearls and diamonds and move straight to Paris in a show of grudge match of the century. I would float through capital cities of Europe and gain my satisfaction knowing that Scrooge had relocated himself from Rome, as I arrived._

_And float through Europe I did, with great pleasure. When I had been just a girl, I had dreamed of one-day glittering on the great stages of the world. And glitter I did. I was no longer on the peak of my youth, but I was on the peak of my experience and I had presence that none of the young girls could ever hope to emulate. Not to forget the mystery surrounding my recent status as the McDucks ex-wife, single and unattached again. I kept many a man up at night guessing how much McDuck money I had to my name. Counts and lords were happy to pay me a bagful of diamonds to show up to their parties to sing just one song. Later in the evening they would propose. I always kept the rings and skipped to the next city come morning._

_But the real party was to be found in America, the rising power of the world, where skyscrapers were higher and the music louder. The twenties arrived with more glittering than anyone could have ever hoped for, and I arrived to America with an air of scandal traveling at my heels, and they loved me for it._

_In America, I finally sought out Gilda. Or, more appropriately, Gilda sought me out. After all these years, I was starting to feel the weariness of being so alone amongst all these people. So, when a letter arrived inviting me to party hosted by Mrs. Gilda Buchanan, I went and ended up having a merry old time with my past demons._

 

It took her approximately two bottles of champagne, consumed from the small glasses carried around by stoic servants, before Goldie even saw her sister. The mansion, that Gilda was now the new mistress of, was a great hulking thing, a reminder from the days when New York society was in hands of the old money, before this new urban and modern America rose to be the new face of the nation. And just like Gilda had done all of her life, she had perfectly adapted to be what the new America wanted her to be. The host to the great revelry where everyone from everywhere came and went as they pleased, and the alcohol never ran short, despite the prohibition. Where the going was rough and the jazz smooth.

Goldie arrived and spent the first hour wandering about, familiar faces appearing from the crowd to greet her, in the kind of overt familiarity that these kind of gatherings brought up. There were young actresses that knew her name; that turned up by her side with their short dresses and hungry eyes and whose way of moving about reminded Goldie of when she had been so much more younger and stupider. There were producers that she had worked with, and Broadway directors that she had had screaming rows with. Young heirs and heiresses were there alongside governors and gangsters.

They all had their tragedies that they were hiding behind all that money and sparkle.

Finally, as Goldie was starting to suspect that she was at the wrong address, Gilda glided to her sister’s side amidst all of it.

“Goldie! How great it is to see you!” She breathed out and draped herself around Goldie’s neck. Goldie couldn’t but admire her sisters acting skills, as she delivered her lines like she was in Hollywood film.

“You have certainly done well for yourself!” Goldie ended up saying, unsure of what else to say.

“Oh, all this? Yes, well, it is all so very modern, isn’t it? My husband loves this new age. Makes him feel younger.” Gilda pointed towards into the crowd where an older gentleman was dancing amongst a flock of young flapper girls.

“Do you ever do anything for your own enjoyment?” Goldie couldn’t help but ask, seeing the hidden distaste behind her eyes, as she eyed the party around them. After all these years, and her sister was still an enigma to Goldie. Gilda, like was her habit, ignored Goldie and continued the conversation where she had left it.

“I was sorry to hear about your divorce of course. But you do seem to have managed just fine even afterwards. McDuck must have left you a quite sum after the proceedings.”

“Less than you might think.” Goldie said, thinking of the wooden box holding the goose egg nugget, castle McDuck ownership documents, and the number one dime. “I have lived with the money I have earned myself on the show business, on both sides of the pond.” Scrooge had rubbed off on her enough that she found it insulting when people assumed that she would have to use Scrooge’s money to make do.

“Hmm. You know that they can’t stop talking about him in the circles.”

“I bet.” Goldie emptied her glass and motioned for another one. If Gilda insisted on talking about her ex-husband, she might as well be properly drunk for it.

“They say that he is going to be the richest person alive soon, if he keeps going as he does.”

“Probably, I don’t particularly care.”

“If you hadn’t taken off as soon as you did, you could have gotten much more than all those years ago.”

“I think I already got his most valuables.” A smile tugged at her beak, thinking back to the little wooden box. The alcohol was making it hard to think whether she was bittersweet, triumphant, or just indifferent.

“Come, let’s get out from all this noise!” Gilda suddenly had the voice of a lively Hollywood dame again.

Goldie was dragged to the garden, where the noise level was not as deafening, and where the great fountain stood as the most eye-catching feature of the entire garden. It was a beautiful fountain, carved from marble, and the lights coming from the house made the water sparkle in the cool night air.

Goldie turned to look at her sister, seeing the traces of their mother in her face, seeing traces of herself in her face. Her own flesh and blood, the only one that she had truly left in this life. All of her other acquaintances were nothing more than glitter and flashes. Gilda knew that there was another person behind the glamour. The one made of dirt and anger and determination.

“I am your only family now, aren’t I?” Gilda said in the voice of a solemn vow.

“Yes, you are. The only one I have left.” Goldie agreed, letting the truth be voiced.

“Then wouldn’t you help me. If I needed it?” Gilda whispered, her eyes keenly staring at the fountain, not even glancing at Goldie.

“I would try.” Goldie answered honestly.

“We are broke. Parties like these- “Here Gilda nodded towards the house, “-are not cheap. My husband is unsatisfied with life; it makes him gamble. We need-, I need money. Fast.” All of her words came out slowly, like they were forcibly pulled from her, like saying them physically pained her. It might have done so. Goldie understood pride. “And you-, you got all that money from McDuck- “

“Gilda listen. I know everybody thinks that I have a secret fortune hidden somewhere, but when we broke apart, I didn’t take any money from Scrooge.”

Gilda’s face twisted with rage. She grabbed Goldie’s arms and pushed her towards the edge of the fountain with the force of her anger. “You are abandoning me!”

Gilda’s grip hurt. Goldie could feel her nails digging deep into her flesh. “No! Gilda I’m not lying!”

There were tears in her sister’s eyes and those were shocking to see. This was the first time that Goldie had seen Gilda cry. “Liar! You are nothing more than a liar!”

“No! I swear!” One could still faintly hear the jazz music mixed with screams of delight coming from the house. On her back, Goldie could feel drops of water spraying from the fountain clinging on to her back. But most of all she was aware of her sister, her voice, her touch, her emotions. I always thought you didn’t have emotions, Goldie thought.

“You are a liar and nothing more than a w- “Goldie couldn’t hear the rest of the sentence. Her senses were taken over by a sharp pain in her side, a sudden stab of pain so loud that everything else stepped back from her senses.

Faintly Goldie noticed that Gilda had stepped back too. She wasn’t in Goldie’s face any longer. Something wet was also making its way down Goldie’s side. Her hand made its way down to where the wetness was coming from and came back red. Now that Gilda was so silent, the sound of music was much clearer.

Gravity took hold of her and pulled Goldie down, down to the embrace of the cold water behind her. Something metallic glinting in Gilda’s hand was the last thing Goldie’s eyes took notice before she fell under.

It was cold, freezing. Freezing as winter in Dawson had once been. There were bubbles floating up and away from her, just like the ones in her champagne glass had been, just bigger. The feeling of falling, and falling, and falling did not stop. In the coldness, there were memories floating into her mind, and they were like bubbles too, beautiful and fleeting. Her mother’s laugh. Gilda’s breath when she had slept beside her in their small bed. Brushing Sarah’s hair. Having a girls’ night out with the dancers from Bird’s cage. Sunlight shining through the train windows. The northern lights over Yukon. Scrooge’s face when she had proposed to him. Fergus McDuck accepting her into the family. Bathing in coins with Scrooge. The crowd cheering and throwing roses to her in Moulin Rouge. The quiet morning walks, under the big white Hollywood sign.

She lost the feeling of falling and the feeling of coldness to the warm floating feel of dreams. In her dreams Scrooge was with her, holding her hands in his own calloused ones. The familiar hands worn by both cold and hard work. “You know, I was never supposed to be your conscience. Maybe, if you had tried to better yourself for your own sake, instead of just to humour me, you could have helped me before I cracked.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You are a careless woman Goldie. You destroy people.”

“But I did love you. I still love you. More than anything!”

“It just wasn’t enough.”

For the rest of her dreams, Goldie wandered through the wilderness of Yukon, trying to find the familiar route to White Agony Creek, in vain.

 

When Goldie woke up, she was in a hospital. A familiar one, the same one where her mother had died so long ago. The hospital had of course changed, as had the city around it. But underneath all the changes, it was still the same one.  

“You are awake Miss O’Gilt!” There was a nurse looming over her, a young pretty thing with too wide smile and too innocent eyes for someone working in a hospital.

“What,” was the intelligent reply from Goldie.

“You were bleeding so much when they brought you here, had already lost so much blood. We feared for the worst. I’m glad it turned this way.”

“Me too dear. Me too.”

“But I have some bad news for you as well, I- I am so sorry, I wouldn’t wish-“

“Just spit it out.”

“Your sister is dead.”

“Oh.” Nothing felt real, in this clean, sunshine laden room, with this nurse who was twisting her hands in front of her anxiously.

“She- she went driving, when they took you to the hospital, quite heavily drunk they say. She drove her car out form the road. Straight down to the river. She must have been in shock, or-“

“That’s quite alright dear. You may go.”

“If there’s-“

“Go.”

She went. All anxious fluttering, she disappeared. Goldie was left behind in a world so drastically changed. It was a world that had left her behind. A world where Gilda would forever remain an enigma, a question without conclusion. A world Where Goldie was an old woman, weighted down by her regrets. A world that was both sparkling and broken.

 

The nurse fluttered in and out during her recovery, chattering this and that. She didn’t mention Gilda again, which was good, because Goldie didn’t know how she would have reacted. All in all, she felt tired, and not in a physical way. She was sent flowers from people she barely tolerated, and suddenly the idea of returning to society sickened her. She was done with the glitter and bubbles that weren’t real, that meant nothing to anyone. Her youth was now officially gone, the youth and energy that she had clung into for so long.

In contrasts, someone who did not lack energy was her loyal nurse, with her bouncy, dark curls. As Goldie didn’t offer up any conversations, she filled the air with her own voice, like she was afraid of silence.

“-And daddy will be so happy, I was thinking of buying him a new jacket this weekend-“

“You support your father?” Goldie asked, for the first time slightly interested in her young caretaker in absence of any other stimulants.

“Oh, yes. He is not that happy about it, but I don’t mind. We manage quite all right these days. It just takes to his pride. You know, he used to be a miner in Yukon, when I was just a little baby. Went up there all by himself and promised to make our family finally rich. He did quite well for himself too, found a good claim, worked hard. It is such a shame what happened. Got robbed. Drugged in a saloon and robbed from everything that he had. I have heard that it was dangerous up there, but you always think that things like these happen to someone else. But anyways, yes. He had to come back home after, sold his boots to afford train back home, and lost two toes for frostbites. He was broken afterwards. Felt like he had failed as a man. Betrayed us. I guess life just isn’t fair like that. His health isn’t the best, so me and my sisters have all been working hard to support the family. It’s not so bad anymore, we have all done quite well for ourselves. Oh, Miss. O’Gilt are you quite all right? You look pale. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to bother you with my chatter!”

 

_When I was finally released from the hospital, I left New York and didn’t look back. I ignored the letters from Mr. Buchanan, asking if they could have private dinner together, ignored the invitations to the numerous parties being thrown all over the city, ignored the rumour that Scrooge McDuck had arrived to the Wall Street, and travelled up to north. As north as I could get, until I finally arrived at familiar valley, as beautiful and pure as ever, and crashed down at the old and hard wooden bed, that still creaked in a familiar way._

_I settled into White Agony Creek and planned to never get up from the uncomfortable bed. To never see another wretched person. I was tired and wanted nothing more than isolation and silence from my life from now on._

_This is how Glittering Goldie stopped conquering the world._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -What, two chapters in one day, holy shit!  
> -wow, okay. This fic still has one full chapter and an epilogue to go. I swear this has a happy ending.  
> -You know, if I was an actual comic book writer making characters for the Disney universe, Gilda would turn out to be alive after all and resurface as a recurring villain later on. Because I just realised that character has a evil sibling is such a comical cliche. But then again this fic isn't exactly Disney rated with all the adults themes either so, I wouldn't be very good writer for the Disney comics anyways...  
> -Hortense and Matilda were not impressed by Goldie's actions, especially because of the Castle McDuck issue. They also were not impressed with Scrooge for letting the castle go so easily. In short, they quit contact with both.   
> -The next chapter is not actually going to be based on Back to Klondike, because I will smudge the timelines a bit to mix things up...  
> -Chapter title taken from Lana Del Rey's Body Electric.


	9. will you still love me, when I've got nothing but my aching soul

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I've seen the world, done it all  
> Had my cake now  
> Diamonds, brilliant, in Bel-Air now  
> Hot summer nights, mid July  
> When you and I were forever wild  
> The crazy days, city lights

The mansion had become smaller when the boys had stepped in. It was peculiar magic apparently inherent to children, one that Scrooge had not known, or believed until this day. But here was the proof. For years, he had haunted these same rooms, same halls, and always they had seemed countless and easy to get lost into. But now that the three identical boys had taken it into their liberty to storm through each room, loud and careless, the mansion had become only a building.

It was terrifying. What did Scrooge possibly know about having a family. If there was one consistent in his life, it was the ability to make people who were supposed to care for you, hate you. His wife had left first. Disappeared off to shine her presence all across the world. Always too close for comfort, but also maddeningly far away. The worst part had always been that he had not been able to stop admiring her from the distance, and in doing so had been reduced as part of the masses who adored her from afar.

His sisters had gone next, or more accurately Scrooge had kicked them out. They had not stayed to linger in Scrooge’s peripheral vision like Goldie had done for decades. Last Scrooge knew of, Matilda had followed her Austrian husband beyond the sea, and Hortense… He didn’t even know the details of what had happened to Hortense.  

Here he however was, hosting remainders of his family members, who were currently tucked away at a quest bedroom. Who had even known that the mansion had a quest bedroom. Certainly, not Scrooge.

But old habits die hard, and so he was once again pacing the disgustingly expensive carpet on the living room at night-time.

It wasn’t the question of whether to return to work and open his money bin once more that was keeping him up. That wasn’t even a question anymore. Now that he had once more tasted at the life outside of his self-made prison, he knew that he would not survive another year, another month, or even a week counting at the threads on the Persian carpet.

What he was unsure was what to do with the… children. Even Donald was easier, because Scrooge was counting that the boy’s natural greed would keep him close, and at least pretending affection. The boys however were still too young to understand the value of being in line to inherit all of this. As the children that they were, they would not see the long-term profits of having a rich uncle, but would only be concerned of having an uncle here and now.

And what on earth would he do with someone who did not want to make profit of him.

The doorbell halted his spiralling thoughts. Curiosity at who on earth could be ringing his doorbell at half past ten made him hurry to the door and eventually to meet the displeased looking mailman carrying a letter from the Whitehorse bank, marked as top first class priority, to be delivered as fast as possible.  

After reading the letter, he knew at least one thing. Next morning, he would be heading to Yukon.   

 

Donald had found himself waking up to a brave new world. A world where he woke up in a guest room of mansion, on a luxurious wide bed with silken sheets. He woke up as a man who had suddenly found himself in the good graces of an estranged, rich, uncle. Not just rich, but the richest. The richest uncle in the world. Technically he had always known that he was related to the baziljonare, but he hadn’t known known. He hadn’t seen the three cubic acres of cold cash with his own eyes, and most importantly uncle Scrooge had most probably not even known that Donald existed.   

That all was now going to change. In front of his eyes opened a future where Donald Duck would be a name counted amongst the rich and famous of the society. If uncle Scrooge truly was serious about returning to business, Donald might get a position of his own. A limousine, and maybe a mansion for himself too. Nothing too grand of course, but maybe with a generous pool and a few servants, and of course his own cook. Cousin Gladstone’s beak would drop off his face in envy.

“Unca Donald whe- Oh yeah! Unca Scrooge’s mansion. It wasn’t a crazy dream after all!”

Well, mansion and limousines aside, he might be able to take the boys travelling around the world, like they had always wanted. He would gladly exchange his future pool and serving staff, and even the limousine, to make sure that the boys had a childhood that they deserved.

“Wake up lads!”

Donald jumped from his bed in fright after the room’s door was thrown open with vigour that the door had not been made to stand. A frighteningly chipper uncle was standing on the doorway, dressed and all too ready to face the morning. Donald’s upside down view of his uncle might have been partly at fault, but to him Scrooge McDuck looked slightly too manic for this hour of the morning.

His nephews did not seem to mind. “Uncle Scrooge! What are we going to do today? Can we go back to the bin? Can we chase more bad guys?”

“We are going to Yukon boys!”

“YES!” The boys cheered on one voice.

“NO!” Donald shut the cheering down instantly. This was too much madness this early in the morning. “What on earth are you talking about?”

“My bank in Whitehorse send me a notice that I will finally be able to collect one of my more… displaced savings.”

“You mean a treasure hunt?!” Louie gasped, and Donald got a sinking feeling that he was going to lose this argument, and would have to say goodbye to any hopes of lazy Christmas holiday filled with nothing but eating and sleeping.

“Yes lad. A treasure hunt.” Uncle Scrooge answered and the boys lit up like their Christmas had come just now to them. Donald could do nothing, but surrender as his newly found uncle yanked him forwards with the end of the cane looped around his ankle.

“Get dressed, I have already made all the necessary planning for us to leave.”

“Wait, did you sleep at all last night then?”

“Sleep is for the weak!” Uncle Scrooge announced, already rushing off.

 

Dawson looked like the ghost of the town that Scrooge could remember. The buildings were old, but not the same buildings From Scrooge’s memories. This was not a surprise, as the frequent fires of Dawson had kept the builders almost as rich as the miners, and no one could ever truly get used to a building because it would probably be burned down in few months.

But the successive incarnations of the buildings mostly looked the same, and so it was easy for Scrooge to spot the buildings that had once been the dentist’s office, the supply store, the church.

The Blackjack saloon.

Scrooge passed that building with more haste than the others, the ghost of it less benign than that of the others.

“No stories about the saloon?” Donald laughed, noticing how almost every other building had gotten a commentary from his nostalgic uncle, eagerly soaked in by the triplets.

Scrooge glanced at the saloon, trying to avoid the memories that lurked behind its walls and peeked from its windows. “No. When others would waste their money on saloons and gambling-houses, I would save every penny. Dawson hated me for it, of course, but I did not care. I was not going to waste my hard-earned riches to such nonsense as this city wanted me to.”

Donald rolled his eyes behind his uncle’s back. No wonder the old coot had ended up as a miserable hermit with such attitude.

“By the devil! That miserable litany of self-righteousness I would recognise anywhere! If it isn’t Scrooge McDuck, the King of Klondike in the flesh.”

The title “King of Klondike” would have sounded grand, had it been said in any other way possible. But it was said in a way that made it unquestionably an insult. The man behind the insult was an old pig, looking sickly enough that the only thing seemingly keeping him alive at this point was spite.

Scrooge dug into the cavern of his memories, action that was always more difficult without his coins there to guide his way, and reconstructed the face in front of him to what it must have been nearly a half century ago. The face that floated up as an answer, was a face that he had hoped to forget for good.

“Soapy Slick. I would not have believed that you would still haunt this place!”

Soapy grinned at Scrooge with his yellowed teeth bared. Age had rubbed all the slickness and charm off from him, and left only the unpleasantness behind. As the old pig hobbled closer, Donald protectively pulled the boys behind him. They went uncharacteristically obligingly, their spirit of adventure, and eagerness to fend against scoundrels, not extending to half-mad old men who smelled like mould and worse things.

 Scrooge might have preferred to take a step back himself, just to avoid the smell, but concluded that as the new head of the family, he could not waver in front of Soapy Slick, a man who was sure to get meaner with age. “My family has no business with you, so if you’ll excuse us!” He said instead.

Knowing Soapy Slick’s track record with excusing anything, expect his own crimes, it did not come as a surprise when the pig refused to move.

“And what might be the business of Scrooge McDuck in these parts? Surely you are not just sight-seeing?”

“That is precisely what we are doing. And now we need to keep doing it. Good day!” Scrooge used his cane to push Soapy’s face away from his personal space, and marched away with a purpose, his nephews scrambling to follow him.

Soapy let them go, little bit because there was still a scheming bastard inside him that believed that following them from a distance might lead him to an opportunity for some robbery, and a lot because he was an old man with aches in his aches and a broken hip that had never quite settled.

“You should visit my riverboat sometime! We could chat about the good old days!” Soapy’s cackling laugh followed the ducks, as they power-walked away from the scene.

“Who was that?” Louie asked his great-uncle, shuddering in revulsion.

“No one you need to concern yourself with. An old gambler, who tried to rob my gold several times, always failing. He holds a grudge over that. I also had very bad influence on his riverboats, which I would guess he also holds against me.”

His young nephews gave him a look, but their uncle just smiled self-satisfied and pointed at a faint footpath starting from the edge of the town. “We’ll be heading that way!”   

 

_Interesting_. Soapy Slick pondered. _First,_ _she starts moving about the woods like she hasn’t done in years, and now he shows up. They must be in a trail of a treasure. They must be!_

 

After a gruelling hike, following paths that were apparently visible only to uncle Scrooge, the entire train of ducks stopped into spot near the river that for the Ducks looked just like any other spot, but that obviously was not only a spot to the one McDuck leading them.

“And what exactly are we looking for in here?” Donald wheezed, leaning heavily to a tree and shivering. No matter how many times the boys commented on the magnificent view, and no matter how happily they kept peppering Scrooge with questions pertaining the cold rush, Donald held tightly to his opinion that hiking in Canadian wilderness in December was nothing but madness.

“That,” Scrooge pointed in the direction of the river. “We are looking for that.”

“The river.” Donald deadpanned.

“Ach! Of course, not. That’s my old mark right there.” Scrooge was already making his way through the thick snow, but spared a glance behind to convey his disapproval of his nephew’s pessimistic attitude.

“It’s the old musket that he used to mark the spot where his sled fell into the glacier.” Dewey filled his confused uncle in. “Haven’t you been listening to Unca Scrooge’s stories?”

Donald hadn’t. He had been too busy thinking about his armchair and hearth back home.

The three adolescents followed their newer uncle eagerly, which left Donald with no other choice but to also push his way through the snow, until he too was standing on the ice-cliffs at the edge of the Dawson river. From the old glacier, the end of a musket produced. It was old, but had weathered the years with surprising grace, much like its owner.

Looking between his feet, Donald could vaguely make a blot inside the ice, assumedly the much-fussed sled.

“Look! I think I can see your sled, unca Scrooge!” Louie called out excitedly, peering down into the ice.

“Aye, lad. There it lies. The ice is in danger of breaking apart and slipping into the river, so if we want to get it up, we have to move quickly. I think that we need only a day or two to hack it out, with proper tools and planning.” He picked up a coil of sturdy rope from his backpack, tying the middle around the musket with a tight knot. “Let’s support the edge a bit, and tie the ends of the rope into the trees over there.”   

They never got around tying the ends of the rope into anything, as their contemplations over the ice were cut short by an intruder.

At first it looked like they were under the unfortunate attentions of an angry black bear that had woken from hibernation in wrong time and was just looking for a duck sized snack to ease its hunger. It became even more alarming, when they realised that the bear was carrying a rider.

She was old, obviously, but in a very dignified manner. Of course, it was very easy to look dignified when riding a bear, but it was surprisingly not only that, which made one feel like they should be taking their hat off and doing a little curtsy accompanied with a respectful “Madam.”

“Whoever you are, you can scatter away seeing as-,“ She started her speech, and ended it with disbelieving, “Scrooge?”

Scrooge did not get anything pass his vocal chords, expect a faint choking sound. For a brief second he looked like he might sway on his feet, but it passed.

The silence was deafeningly loud between them.

“You know her?” Donald whispered to his uncle. “Who is that?”

“That Donald, is my ex-wife.” Scrooge finally got his voice back.

“Your-! Your ex-wife! That one?! The one riding a bear!?”

“Yes.” Scrooge answered simply and dragged Donald with him to get closer to the bear and its rider.

“Is that how you choose your acquaintances?! By their ability to tame wild bears?!”

“Come now Donald. I will talk to her; you can distract the bear.”

“ME! DISTRACT THE BEAR! You do know that I can’t actually tame bears!”

“Don’t be so modest. We are in a hurry.”

Goldie O’Gilt, once also known as Goldie McDuck, dismounted her bear with all the regality of a queen, and made her way towards the loose collection of the McDuck family members in front of her. Donald was left to make an acquaintance with the bear, which looked utterly unimpressed with the sailor-suited duck in front of it.

“Fancy seeing you here.” Scrooge greeted the love of his life, dressed in practical deerskins and hair a silver cascade gathered to a bun over her head.

“I could say the same to you.” The love of his life replied, voice and face unreadable for clues for her feelings.

Some way off, Donald Duck was running away from an angry bear in a merry pursuit of him.

“I didn’t know you had taken up beast taming as your past-time lately.” Scrooge casually noted. He didn’t enjoy the openly curious and slightly awed look his three grand-nephews were giving to his ex-wife. He vaguely feared that he was about to lose his new family, if they were to see how explosive his relationship with Goldie could get. All in all, Scrooge felt that it was immensely unfair from the universe to throw his ex-wife to his face just as he was about to become a better person.

“I have handled angrier creatures than old Blackjack over there.” They all spared a glance at the bear that was sitting under a tree and growling, eyes keenly following the sailor coated duck that was scrambling to reach the top of the tree.

“Um, Unca Scrooge…?” One of the triplets tugged slightly at his uncle’s jacket.

“Hush, lad. This has nothing to do with you boys.” The boys frowned in unison, like children who had long ago learned that when adults said that something wasn’t the concern of children, it usually ended up affecting the children anyways.

Goldie turned her attention from Scrooge to the boys huddling behind him. Eyes curious and intimidating in the same accidental manner that had once put Scrooge’s sisters off when first meeting her.

“Nephews? Which one’s…” Goldie struggled between honest curiosity about the family she had once been part of, and between keen knowledge that she didn’t belong into that family anymore.

“Hortense’s grandchildren.” Scrooge supplied. “She had twins after you left.”

“I see.” Goldie said, and didn’t know how to continue. It had been a long time since she had felt this awkward, and she didn’t know what to do with the feeling. It didn’t help that the children kept staring at her. “That’s good, they tried to have children so hard.” She continued, and meant it. Hortense had always wanted to start a family with her husband, and had secretly feared that she might be plighted with the same condition that Goldie was, and would never get to have that family.

A crack broke the little bubble of reminiscence, and the ducks turned around to see Donald’s feet sticking from the snowbank, a broken tree branch sticking up next to the legs. Blackjack the bear did a very good impression of his rider and gave the legs a disapproving stare. It looked very alarming on a face of a bear.

“Stop fooling around Donald! We are not here to play with the fauna!” Scrooge yelled at the legs, which gave a twitch, interpreted by Scrooge as an agreement.   

 “And what exactly are you here for?” Goldie asked, knowing very well what they were here for.

“You know what we are here for.” Scrooge said.

“The sled.” Goldie finally named the thing they were all there for.

“My sled.” Scrooge corrected. “With my property inside. Which I’m going to retrieve now.”

“That sled does not contain only your property!” Goldie snarled at Scrooge’s back, which was stiffly marching away from her, towards the old musket stuck in the ice. As her words went ignored, she gathered her legs and half run, half power-walked towards the same musket.

Donald Ducks, and his legs, had managed to get the right way around again. Wiping the snow from his eyes, Donald could see an imminent disaster, and he had had a lifetime to get acquittanced with imminent disasters near himself. Seeing someone else causing one was a change that he did not find as refreshing as he would have thought.

“Uncle wait! The ice! The ice will break-!”

The ice rumbled threateningly, and Donald pushed the bear out of his way in order to yank his three wards back, further away from the icy cliffs that were rumbling like a waking beast.

Scrooge and Goldie of course did not move an inch, standing both unyielding, the musket between them.

“Technically, that sled isn’t your property anymore, but the property of the one who manages to reclaim it from the ice, after all these years.” Goldie defended her right to loot the sled, just in case Scrooge would decide to pull out a lawyer somewhere from the snowbanks. Scrooge gave her a look that told her exactly how he felt about letting Goldie take anything from his sacred past.

“I don’t think that either of you should be standing that close to the edge!” Donald tried to get the attention of either of the old gold-rush legends, keeping the boys near him. Blackjack growled beside him, sounding slightly worried, even if it was hard to say with bears. “We can come back later, when the ice doesn’t make that sound anymore.”

“They are in danger, aren’t they?” Huey said to Donald.

“They are both in danger of hearing a piece of my mind for being stubborn old geezers who ignore danger!” Donald hissed between his teeth.

Somewhere below them, a sound of a ship travelling upstream could be heard. A craning of a neck and a squinted glance told Donald that this mess was about to get messier, as he could recognise the riverboat that the crazy old pig from Dawson had claimed as his own, and invited uncle Scrooge into, probably with ill intentions, coming nearer and nearer with every second. Apparently Soapy was abusing his ship to travel with speed it hadn’t had to reach in decades.

Goldie and Scrooge had also noted the arrival of a third party to an event that had been strictly one person show in both of their minds. But the sight of Soapy’s riverboat momentarily gave both of them a feeling of solidarity, as they both looked at each other and silently decided that whatever happened, at least Soapy Slick would never be allowed anywhere near the sled.

Then of course, just as the two were almost reaching some kind of an understanding, the ice that they were standing on dropped from beneath them.

The ancient glacier had recently suffered great many shifts in the local geology, mostly caused by the movements of the soil due to de-forestation. There was also something to be said about the idea of the mother earth herself playing one big cruel joke at the ducks that she had once blessed so richly in these same forests. Whatever the reason, the iceberg broke apart from the rest of the ice, falling straight into the foaming and churning Dawson-river, taking with it the sled, and the two ducks ending up grabbing the rope still tied to the musket above the sled. Both having the other end of the rope pulled tight, they were hanging at the opposite ends, and hoping against hope that the musket would be lodged tight enough in the ice that it wouldn’t come up and plunge both of them into the river.

Donald and the boys had made maybe a more frightening leap into the unknown, as the ice that they had been standing had disintegrated completely, but they had also ended up ultimately in a much safer environment.

Soapy Slick stared at the pile ducks that had crashed through the roof into the cockpit of his boat. It must be something in the family, he concluded in his mind, and cursed the McDuck family line straight into the deepest pits.

The ducks showed no signs of knowing that they and their line had just been cursed to the deepest pits, as they were too busy to figure out getting air back into their lungs, and then were rushing to the side of the ship in one flurry avalanche of feathers and loud noise. Mostly that noise consisted of: “Jump off Uncle Scrooge!” and, “You’ll die if you stay up there!” and “Let go, both of you!”

But they won’t let go, because in that sled there is a past, his and hers. And there laid the problem, because back then their life had been a singular entity, just one life. Now of course, they were almost strangers to each other, and even worse, they were hard, selfish, greedy strangers. Made of jagged edges and harsh surfaces.

“You should have jumped to follow your smarter nephews!” Goldie screamed over the sound of the river around them.

“Me! Scrooge McDuck to run away! Don’t insult me. More importantly, as long as you are clinging into my sled, I will not let go! You on the other hand should have stayed in Dawson, instead of putting yourself in my way, just to spite me!”

“Believe me, I am not here to spite you. I would actually prefer it if you had never shown up at Dawson, and I could have collected my sled in peace.”

“Oh spare me lass! One ballroom dress is not worth all this trouble to put yourself through.”

“Neither is your mouldy pickaxe, and still here you are.”

The ice kept speeding faster down the river, cold water flying in the air and splashing over both of them. The old musket yanked to the left in a heart stopping movement, but then stayed still firmly embedded in the ice. For a moment, both ducks had been sure that in a second they would both be plunged into their watery grave.

They did not get plunged into the river, but their personal gravity changed enough that they were no longer balancing on the opposite ends of the ice. Now as the ice tipped, they were both thrown against each other, dangerously dangling without a foothold on either side.

The musket again started to dangerously tip under the weight of two stubborn ducks. Instinct took over, and they melded to each other, Scrooge’s hand finding its familiar place on Goldie’s waist, and Goldie’s other hand going around Scrooge’s neck.

The iceberg leaned on its side, dipping the two ducks under the surface of the freezing river, but the mass of the ice was too much for it to go fully around. Instead when it righted itself, the two soaked hitchhikers were returned back up, unharmed but very blue around their beaks.

“I D-d-did not r-r-remember person could get this cold.”

“I-I-I d-d-d-don’t f-f-feel a t-t-thing.”

“y-y-you really should have stayed with your family. W-w-when You have a family.”

“A-a-and you really should not have risked your life clinging to a s-s-sled full of junk!”

The iceberg teetered again, speeding but at the same time wobbling more and more. The musket was moving more and more in its lodge.

“I have nothing else left anymore. You, on the other hand, have more nephews than you apparently know what to do with. I hope that they have at least good sense to kick your gravestone when you get yourself killed here!”

“What? _You_ have nothing else left expect an old, ragged, dress that I made you dig gold in?! Don’t make me laugh! You are a good liar but not that good.”

“If I wasn’t busy dangling on a rope over a freezing river, I would punch you in the beak! Your selfishness still knows no bounds!”

“MY selfishness. That sled is the only link I have to my past, and YOU are the one who is trying to steal it under my beak!”

Guilt punched Goldie’s heart with a fist decorated with knuckle irons. The image of an old dusty locker with papers, gold nugget, and one dime flashed through her mind.

“My memories are the only thing keeping me alive, that have kept me alive for the last decade! I will not let them slip away now!” He continued ranting.

“I wouldn’t have- I just wanted _my_ memories back. I wasn’t going to steal anything from _you._ ” Goldie countered.

“Neither did I. I would have given you your things back. I don’t understand why you would _think_ \- “

Because they both have panicked with the idea that something so intimate and important as their past would slip from their grasp, that neither of them had been able to stop and think. Because they hadn’t been ready to face each other so suddenly, without a warning. couldn’t fathom the thought of showing weakness in front of the person who had haunted their lonely moments so viciously in their self-made exiles.

The river slowed down, the thin but angry stream opening up to the much calmer body of water by Dawson city. They had made it.

“Oh look at that. We made it.” Scrooge sounded so earnestly pleased, that he sounded at least two decades younger.

“Don’t count on it yet. Soapy is coming towards us at full speed.” Goldie had to burst that bubble of happiness.

Turning his head, Scrooge too could see the old riverboat speeding straight towards them like it was coming to take revenge on all of the riverboats that Scrooge had sunk during his life.

With a mighty crash, they all made it to the shore, mostly worse for the wear. The iceberg was violently rammed by Soapy’s boat, and finally shattered against the shore, taking the front of the riverboat down with it. The last riverboat victim of Scrooge McDuck.

Goldie crashed to the wet riverbank amidst flying chunks of ice, ears ringing, old bones aching and vision swimming. It was not something she would like to admit to anyone, but she was getting too old to be thrown around like this.

The sled, free of its icy prison slid merrily past her, the push from the impact throwing it far away from the site of the crash.

From the corner of her still slightly swaying vision Goldie could see Scrooge, who had landed into the river, spitting out water. But then a flying chunk of ice from the iceberg found its way to land straight at that head. The duck in question went instantly limp, and disappeared under the waves.

The next thing Goldie noticed was that she was submerged in the frozen stream, swimming, reaching, racing against the cold that was freezing her from the inside out, racing against the burning in her lungs, racing against the limits of her own aging and frail body.

Behind her the bubbles rose towards the surface, like so many tiny snow-globes, beautiful and ultimately sad.   

 

Scrooge came to a taste of dirty water in his mouth and to every part of his body hurting. It felt like the old times. For the first moments of consciousness, all he could hear was a loud buzz, but the buzz did morph into distinguishable voices eventually. High pitched, worried, childish.

“Unca Scrooge! Are you all right!?”

“Aye lad. I’m fine.” Some of the worst noise calmed down after that.

Sitting up was a painful but necessary experience. He had to visually check that his feet were still there, as he had no feeling of them. Beside him, he could also see his ex-wife, sprawled on the ground on her back, sopping wet, dirty, unkempt, and still to him utterly gorgeous.

“Goldie…?”

“Shut up, can’t you see that I’m dead over here!”

“hmph! Stop being a drama queen.”

Goldie opened one eye, and glanced at Scrooge, in indignation. “Me? Stop being a drama queen? Really?!”

“Unca Scrooge! She saved you! It was awesome. And she’s so cool! Why aren’t you married anymore?”

Ah, the innocence of children.

“You’ll understand when you’re older.”

One of the boys (which one?) gave Scrooge an unimpressed face, but the matter was dropped. Instead the other boy (which one?) pulled up something square and old that he had been holding behind his back.

“This dropped from the sled.”

It was a chocolate box, decades old. The last box of chocolates in White Horse, in the spring of 1899. Scrooge accepted the box and for a moment just stared at it, lost in memories of entirely different time. Uncharacteristically for children of that age, the boys stepped back and let their grand-uncle have his moment undisturbed.

The box was still covered in frost, but the lid opened easily enough. Inside frozen chocolate pieces and a yellowed piece of paper met his gaze.

Scrooge was yanked from his recollection by a familiar slender hand stealing the paper right in front of Scrooge’s beak.

“What’s this?”

“You give that back!” Scrooge screamed and made to grab it back. Unfortunately, Goldie had already stepped out of his reach, eyes flying over the faded letters on the paper.

Scrooge snatched the paper back, uncomfortable heat blazing on his face. “It’s not for your eyes.”

Goldie let the paper slip easily enough from her fingers. There was a look on her face that made a painful pang go off in Scrooge’s chest, which he ignored.

“I’m sorry. I guess… I guess for a moment I thought that it was fifty years ago.”

For a moment, she had thought that they had been still as they were fifty years ago. That they could easily tease each other, and easily share things. Scrooge heard the unsaid. He understood.

“Well it’s not,” was the only thing he could say.

“I know. But-“

But what? Goldie did not get to finish her sentence, because at that moment they were interrupted by a sound of gun being cocked and the voice of Soapy Slick demanding: “The game’s over lovebirds! Where’s the gold?!”

Instinctively Scrooge moved to stand in front of his three young nephews. Goldie shifted at the same time, also to stand in front of the boys. For the first time in decades, they were once again united front.

Soapy kept moving his gun around, shifting it back and forwards between the two old ducks, seemingly undecided which one he would like to shoot more.

“The gold! You two risked your life for that sled full of JUNK! I went through it, and there’s nothing but old shovels and dusty clothes in that sled! But there has to be more! Something else! A map for hidden gold? Are there some valuable papers hidden somewhere inside the sled? What?! WHAT!?”

“There is no gold Soapy.” Goldie stated slowly and carefully. “It is just-“

“LIAR!” Soapy shouted, spittle flying from his mouth. “I have rotted in this rathole of a town for decades, and I will not rot anymore. You will tell me where your hidden gold is, or I will shoot!”

Goldie was painfully reminded of her sister, seeing the ghost of the same madness in Soapy’s eyes.

Then Soapy’s face twitched, and like tree in the Yukon wilderness, he tilted forwards and in an impressive arc fell, face-down, into Dawson’s mud. Behind him Donald stood, an old shovel in his hands, eyes fierce.

“I guess we are quite done here.”

There was a moment of incredulous silence.

“If you dented that shovel, I will be taking it out of your pay check.”

 “Unca Donald!!” Donald was enveloped in all sides by enthusiastic triplets. Something painful twisted in the breast of Scrooge. He had just risked his life chasing after a decades old junk, because that was the only important thing he had left in his life.

Glancing beside him, Scrooge saw Goldie resolutely not looking at Donald who was so easily basking in the love and adoration of his charges.

He coughed awkwardly. “I guess we have to go through who is keeping what from the sled.”

Goldie blinked, shook herself slightly as to ground herself back to this moment, and then blinked again. The cool and flawless mask settling back to her face. For a moment, there was silence, as she seemed to contemplate on something, but finally she came to a decision.

“I have a safe back at White Agony with the Castle McDuck papers, the nugget and the dime. I think that you should have them back.”

Scrooge blinked.

“It was unfair of me to take them in the first place. I think after all these years; you should have them back.”

“I – Wait. At White Agony Creek? You live at the claim?”

“I wanted some peace and quiet.”

“ _You_ wanted some peace and quiet?”

“It’s been a long while Scrooge. I’m not a girl anymore.”

“You weren’t a girl even when we met.”

“I will take that as a compliment.”

“It was. But that’s not the point. You want to give your share of the settlement back? Just like that?”

“Scrooge, what do I need the ownership of your ancestral home for? It was petty, and I think that I have grown too old for pettiness anymore. You should have them back.”

Scrooge’s face went through a complicated range of emotions, before it settled on something harsh.

“So you are finally getting rid of the last reminders of our marriage?”

Goldie’s emotions went through a very similar roller coaster as Scrooge’s had just done.

“Would that… Does that bother you?”

“Of course not!” Scrooge sneered, voice colder than the Yukon river had been. “Fine. I guess that we can take the trip to the claim, and sort out the redistribution of the last of our property for the final time.” He conceded, nodding also towards the sled, that had been quite thoroughly cannibalised by Soapy.

“Donald! We are going to my claim to get back my property.” He hollered towards his still new family. Donald took one look at the couple of ex-marrieds, and did some mental calculations of his own.

“Me and the boys are not going anywhere. We are going to stay right here, where we can rent a hostel, stay warm, and not risk our lives again in the wilderness.”

“But uncle we want to go-“

“Hush boys. Uncle Scrooge is going with Miss O’Gilt all by himself, and that’s final. They can work out whatever it is that they still need to work out without us. It’s better that way.”

“But-“

“No Louie. Uncle Scrooge and Miss. O’Gilt have to settle their business by themselves.” Donald glared at Scrooge pointedly, who looked slightly betrayed, which Donald found absolutely ridiculous. What exactly had he expected Donald to do. To work as an avian shield between the decades old fight? To pick up counselling? No, Donald was staying well out of that mess.

“Fine! But you’ll be paying for your luxury out of your own pocket.”

“Oh believe me, I will gladly do that, considering the options.”

 

 

Yukon was as beautiful as it had always been. Now that he was walking the familiar route to White Agony, it almost felt like it had been just yesterday that he had been working on his first million up there on his claim. It almost felt like he could have been returning from supply run in Dawson, dragging even the old sled behind him.

Almost.

“How did you know that the sled had resurfaced? I have been keeping tabs on it because I live here. Last I heard you lived a life of comfortable retirement in Duckburg.”

“The White Horse bank still had their orders of notifying me about the movement of ice in this region.”

“Still? I would have thought that you would have gotten rid of the whole bank ages ago?”

 “Well I hadn’t. And what are you doing living alone in a middle of nowhere, you hate being alone. You can’t live without excitement and people around you.”

“And, what are you doing, living in a mansion. You can’t stand unnecessary spending, and still I hear that you even have a butler.”

 “living in a mansion is quite expected from the richest duck in the world. What is not expected, is the queen of Hollywood disappearing into the woods of Yukon. You love being adored. You need the applause, I know you.”

“yes well, it all turned out to be bit empty in the end. I was adored, and applauded, and glittered on top of the world, but in the end what was the point. It turned out that art was meaningless, and that there was no real person behind the mask of a performer.”

She didn’t sound self-pitying, Scrooge noted. She sounded matter-of-fact, which for some reason still made Scrooge uncomfortable. In all honesty, Scrooge had always imagined that Goldie had settled into her own mansion somewhere in Hollywood, probably with a new husband, or at least an adoring lover. The idea of Goldie living in self-exile seemed impossible, even after he had witnessed it with his own eyes.

“Hogwash, I’ve met her. She was the one who dug gold at White Agony Creek for a month. Angry most of the time, quite condescending sometimes, has a vile sense of humour, and frankly is pretty rubbish at digging gold.”

“Excuse me! I dug out more gold than you did, and you know it.”

“You did not.”

“Hah! You’re jealous.”

“And now you are being delusional.” He sniffed haughtily.

Goldie laughed at that. One of her honest laughs, the rarest one. It still sent tingles of warmth rolling along Scrooge’s spine. It wasn’t fair, that he was still in love with her, after all these years.

“I guess that I just finally grew into an adult.” Her burst of merriment died a quick death. “Tried to better myself and all that jazz.”

“Running away into the woods is not bettering yourself.”

“No? I used to live in a bubble made of glitter and dreams, this is more solid. I sold the house in Hollywood and gave the money to an orphanage. And to one of my nurses. I robbed her father and by extension her family out of their fortune when I was younger, did you know that?”

“I don’t think that that nurse will be any happier one way or another whether you decide to be miserable for the rest of your life or not.”

“Really? Is this really something you can lecture me over? And what exactly have you been hiding from in your mansion? Even people in here talked about it when you retired, it was so unexpected.”

“I got old, that should not be unexpected to anyone who can count years.”

Goldie gave him an incredulous stare. “You just rode the Dawson river on an iceberg, age is not a valid excuse for Scrooge McDuck.”  

“There are many different ways to age.”

Goldie couldn’t dispute the truth in that, so she let the matter drop. The rest of their journey was completed in silence, which was neither comfortable nor particularly uncomfortable. It just was.

 

The old cabin was cold. It should not have been a surprise by the end of December, but Scrooge had hard time imagining any place inhabited by Goldie O’Gilt to be cold and Spartan. But reality did not bend to match the rose-coloured dreams that Scrooge had secretly relished in the back of his mind. Goldie’s presence did not warm the cabin, as he had remembered it to do back in the days.

Goldie didn’t seem to mind the cold, as she didn’t even bother to start a fire, before she dived into a cupboard and fished out the old safe, thrusting it into Scrooge’s hands unceremoniously.

“There, I shouldn’t have taken them in the first place,” she started, then before she could regret it, the rest of the words came tumbling out hurried, like she knew that she had to say them before her pride could get in the way. “I…I am sorry. I wanted to hurt you and I did. It was… we both did mistakes and I consciously made my choice then to burn all bridges. I was a coward. We faced hardships, were both changing as persons and I didn’t know how to deal with that.

Had I been reasonable, I would have demanded a sum of money from you when we divorced and walked away without turning the whole thing into a theatre play. But I did it. I went with the more dramatic option because I just could not stand the idea that I would not be in your thoughts anymore. I wanted that when I walked out of that door; That you would fear and hate me with a burning passion. I chose it as my priority. Not anyone’s wellbeing, not any attempt of reconciliation, no. I chose as my priority to make an impression, like somehow, we would have still been in that ballroom in Yukon. I was afraid of changing, of aging, so I clung to that idea of a cruel dance hall girl like that persona would somehow bring back my youth and would make me feel powerful. I mistook loneliness for freedom and spite for strength. “

And that was that. Goldie turned around and did not give Scrooge time to answer. His feeble “Goldie, wait I-,“ went utterly ignored as she worked through the motions as fast as possible, digging up her old dresses from the insides of the sled, all three of them in the exact condition as they had been when she put them there. One new and unused, one slightly worn, and one ragged and patched from the time she had dug gold in it.

Wrapped inside the clothes was the small package containing her mother’s comb and assortment of other mementos from her past life.

“Right. I guess… you can go now.” She finally said, hoping that Scrooge would disappear quickly. His presence was making him feeling too many conflicting feelings at the same time, and without the adrenaline, she did not have the energy to work through all of them.

Scrooge blinked awake from his contemplations, looked at the love of his life, and cleared his throat.

“yes, I guess… Yes, I need to get back to the boys. And to Duckburg. It was, well, It was-“

It was. That was indeed all it was.

“I won’t keep you.”

And she didn’t. She plopped down a bucketful of gold into the sled, that she had dug up from between the four stones, placed there just in case after they had left the valley happy, and still in love. Then she had ushered the love of her life out of the door, and felt distinctively like she was doing a mistake the entire time.

It was all very disappointing, and anticlimactic, and worst of all, awkward.   

 

 

The sun, that was contemplating its final descend behind the horizon, found Scrooge McDuck standing at the hill overlooking the valley, just at the mouth of the icy cavern that had protected White Agony for so long. He was holding the safe box in his hands, the sled dragging behind him, and he felt wrong. He wasn’t the one that was supposed to be marching away this path, it was supposed to be the other way around. It was always supposed to be Goldie, who would leave him behind.

He couldn’t do it, he couldn’t take the steps that would take him away from the valley. Before him there waited his new family, new change at business, new adventures. Behind him there was Goldie, who had divorced him, and quite possibly still hated him, after all.

But he still couldn’t leave, so he stalled, by opening the box in his hands, and for the first time in decades looked at his most valued pieces of memorabilia that he had ever owned.

(Well, there was one contester, a simple golden ring locked deep within a wooden chest, buried under mounds of cash, sealed behind thick cement walls of the money bin.)

He looked at them all, basking in their sentimental values. He was once more the master of the McDuck castle, and hopefully his ancestors could once again look at him with approval. He once again held in his hands the goose egg nugget, which had been the fulcrum of his destiny. He once again had in his palm his number one dime, and if he closed his eyes, he could almost see the smoky streets of Glasgow of his youth.

And there, at the corner of the box, there were also two faint glints of gold. Tilting the box, a lock of hair fell out, tied with a faded red ribbon, and a ring. The ring that he had once commissioned from a disbelieving craftsman.

He stared at them, the two proofs of his love towards Goldie O’Gilt, and thought about how they had been hidden inside the box, that had not been opened in decades, if the rust was anything to go by, and then thought of the ring’s pair, locked inside walls and walls and walls.

He paused to contemplate. Considering that he had spent the last ten years hidden inside a mansion doing nothing but replaying and reconstructing his memories about his ex-wife, it was a surprise how little he had actually _thought_ about his ex-wife.

But he was very much _thinking_ about it now, and he was slowly reaching the conclusion that if either of them had in the past ever truly stopped to _think_ properly, many things might have been different.

While he contemplated, he also dug the chocolate box out of his sled, and opened the yellowed love-letter inside. It had been so long since he had written it, that he found it difficult to recognise himself in the words, in the clumsy but genuine words that had been strung together with such optimism that Scrooge had to read them several times just to make sure that he had truly once written them.

He looked at the cabin below him, and thought about how he had never in his life truly apologized about that night and those words in Africa.

When Goldie opened the door, Scrooge had meant to say a lot of things, but none of them came out. What came out instead was:

“Marry me again?”  

It was not a great way to start a conversation. This thought crossed both of their minds.

“Why?” asked Goldie, like that was the only thing she needed to know in order to marry him again, like there wasn’t an African night, and European nights, and American nights, all weighting between them.

“Because…Because I don’t think that we ever really stopped being married, we just stopped talking to each other. Because it feels wrong not to be married. Because I miss you, and because I think that you might miss me too.”

Goldie blinked, Scrooge felt faint. In the long history of his life, this was the most terrifying thing that he had ever done.

Goldie blinked again, and the ice retreated from her eyes. “I think that you should come in.”

 

 

The morning found them both laying at the bed, which had acquired a mattress after Scrooge had last slept in it. His old bones were quite thankful.

“What now? It has been so long since, well since everything. Do we even know each other anymore?” Asked the voice of Goldie, who had shrugged the name McDuck on again like an old comfortable jacket after many years, at least in her mind, if not yet in the eyes of the law.

“I guess we’ll have to start a bit from the beginning again. Not entirely from the beginning, but some building and fixing has to be done.” Answered the voice of Scrooge McDuck, who felt lighter, after he had finally managed to let the apologies, that had been stuck in his throat for decades, out.

“Hmm. But I guess that it won’t be just the two of us from now on.” Said Goldie, who had known ever since she had been young, and talked to Miss. Sarah’s fancy doctors, that she would never have children of her own scampering around her feet. “I guess there are going to be children around from now on.” She said, taken by a surprise by her own words.

“I guess. Now that Donald knows exactly how big of an inheritance there is sitting out there waiting for him, I doubt he will stay away.” He wandered off to make a pot of make a pot of coffee on the old stove.

“You really think that it’s all about the inheritance?”

“Is anything else really possible. Would you really believe in a world like that?” He finally answered, and poured entirely liquid coffee into two cups. Both he and his coffee had mellowed with age.

“I have become old enough to let the world surprise me as it sees fit. The triplets are sweet.” Goldie accepted the cup, and sipped. The taste of coffee made by Scrooge was at the same time familiar and unfamiliar.

“They are smart and spirited. And young. I’m not sure if I was ever that young,” Scrooge admitted. They both sat down by the table, looking at the clear winter morning from the window. Blackjack was sleeping underneath the window. Hopefully, he would soon accept defeat and give into his species biology and find himself a place to properly hibernate.

“Nor I, but it might be nice to have someone who is that young around for a change.”

“It would. I guess that I am truly becoming old, with all this sentimentality.” Scrooge drank both the coffee and the scenery in. The years had not robbed White Agony of its grand beauty.

“Speaking of, maybe we should take a short leave somewhere. Let’s start building this marriage back up somewhere that isn’t tainted with so many miserable memories.” Goldie tasted the word marriage again in her mouth, and found that she liked it, just like the familiar but unfamiliar coffee.

“Where would be a place that isn’t tainted with bad memories? We were quite thorough in our period of fighting and travelling.” Scrooge grimaced.

“Scotland.” Goldie found the answer easily, a proof of many long nights spent thinking about the same question, against her better judgement. “We haven’t been to your ancestral home since all of McDuck family was still on speaking terms.”

“Scotland…has it really been that long since we visited the castle in person? Yes, we should go. It has been too long.” It was no longer the nature of White agony that Scrooge was seeing in front of his eyes.

“We could ask your family to come with us. (They are your family now too, Scrooge injected.) To see the history of the clan. I’m sure the boys would be excited. They are young, they would love an adventure.” Goldie started to actualise the plan.

“They would love a treasure hunt. You know how no one has yet found the chest of gold hidden by Sir Quakly McDuck, somewhere in the castle.”

Their eyes met, and a grin blossomed in both of their faces simultaneously. The future was looking bright again, full of unexplored possibilities and uncharted territories, both physical, geographical, and emotional.  

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -WHOAAAAAA!!!!! The story has officially reached its end! This entire story is finally wrapped up, only epilogue to go!! I can finally be content knowing that at least one childhood ambition has been completed!  
> -This is the longest chapter by far, and it almost killed me. Goodbye, I'm so tired now.  
> -Isn't Young and Beautiful by Lana Del Rey such a good song for these two.


	10. Lifetime of Adventure

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the epilogue

“Aunt Goldie?”

“Yes Donald?”

“Well I was just thinking…well…surely you can see that this is madness and that even if Uncle Scrooge doesn’t listen to us, maybe you would be able to talk some sense in to him…?”

“I don’t understand, what would I need to talk to him about?”

“Well, we are in the middle of the African savannah rolling enormous ball of string open just to spite the local tycoon.”

“And? I don’t see your point.”

“You don’t think that this is a little bit unnecessary?”

“Did you not hear that South African upstart claim that he was the richest duck in the world!? Nobody disrespects the McDuck fortune without consequences!”

“Ah yes. Forgive me, for a moment there I forgot that you are the woman that willingly married Scrooge McDuck.”

“And what exactly is that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing.”

“Good. And if you have enough energy to still be awake, you can use it to swat locusts away from our ball of string.” 

* * *

 

During the midnight hours in a Greek hotel room Goldie once again curled her finger around a lock of her own hair, hair that had perfect golden shade and a cold, hard substance. Scrooge’s fingers joined them and in the darkness the two ducks turned to face each other. Scrooge’s eyes still glimmered with unnatural golden sheen.

“The book did say that the philosopher’s stone would preserve its owner forever. We probably should have thought about that part in the text more.”

They probably should have but when the gold fever had hit, it had hit with a power of a sledge hammer. When Goldie had seen her hair slowly turn from grey to golden, she had thought that she was becoming young again, not that she had been dying. And the worst part was that she honestly couldn’t say that she didn’t miss the feeling of ecstasy that holding the philosopher’s stone had brought.

“Are you ever afraid of our greed?” Scrooge’s voice hesitantly asked, in a voice so quiet one could barely hear it. Goldie burrowed closer to her husband, breathing his scent in. She had been afraid of her greed her entire life.

“We are lucky we have Donald and the boys with us.”

“We are”

* * *

 

“So what do you think? Is she our new manager?”

“Could be. I cannot deny that her credentials are spotless.”

“She has a good head on her shoulders, even if she is still young and over-enthusiastic.”

“It doesn’t however fill me with confidence that she seems to be a bit infatuated with you Goldie.”

“She’s not. She has an obvious crush on you.”

“No, I’m pretty sure I saw her eye you.”

“I have it on good confidence that she adores you, but has promised that she’ll get over it and that it won’t affect her work.”

“Maybe she lied. Why would anyone be infatuated with me when you are an option?”

“….”

“It’s an honest question.”

“Anyway. I guess we send Brigitta MacBridge the good news of her new job.”  

* * *

 

It was on the moment that her body reshaped itself into a much smaller shape that Goldie realized that maybe she should have stayed behind, in the office, when she heard of her husband’s spontaneous trip to Greece.

The slightly manic sorceress in front of her pulled her ancient wand back and laughed. “Careful there, little nightingale! No one will stand in the way of the Circe of modern day!”

Goldie flapped her new wings and let out a scream that came out as a little chirping sound.

“Fine, fine, fine! You win you nasty witch! Here, take the dime.”

The old coin changed hands and you could see the gleam in the dark eyes of the Italian magic user as she held the small thing in her hands. “Finally. Mine, mine, mine!”

Scrooge’s hands settled around Goldie’s now small body, cupping the little song bird and holding the miniscule weight near his chest. Goldie’s new senses could feel the slow and heavy heartbeat of her husband even through his jacket, as opposed to her own fast thrumming.

“Now change my family back! We have a deal!”

“Do we now?” Magica purred, watching the family that had stood on her way so many times. The Old zillionaire standing in front of three pigs and a goat, holding a nightingale in his palms. A smirk grew on her face.

“You should never trust the word of a witch.” 

* * *

 

“Have you read today’s newspaper?”

“Of course, not; I haven’t even been to the park trash-bins today.”

“Well, guess which one of us is having a lover again?”

“Oh God. It’s me isn’t it? You had an affair just last month.”

“Hmm. Your mistress is quite a looker.”

“Do you think Rockerduck even realizes that we have documents from every single cheating scandal that he has orchestrated which will link him directly to the paid actors?”

“Well, let’s not educate him just yet. He has already sent me an invitation to have dinner at Ritz.”

“I’ll prepare the purse that we use for stashing bread-rolls.”

“You’re a dear. You know that this is going to mean that soon every hopeful trophy-wife is going to crawl form the woods to your side.”

“As always. Why they never send me any expensive gifts is both mystery and an injustice.” 

* * *

 

“It looks nice.” Scrooge had to admit in the end.

“It does.” Goldie was so invested in looking at the old dancehall restored, that she forgot to sound smug. It felt good to be back doing this. Blackjack hotel had otherwise been entirely modernised, but the central hall had been only restored to its former glory. Tourists would happily take pictures of themselves in a proper gold-rush era attraction, and try to pick up the scent of the fabled gold rush from the air. Luckily, they would never have to actually be subjected to the odour of piss and stale alcohol that had been the most noticeable scent during the actual gold rush. But it was dreams that people paid for, and had always paid for in this hall.

“I’m glad we could save it.” Goldie added, and smiled at her husband.

“Yes, me too.” Her husband admitted in a rare spoken admission of pure nostalgia, that was not wrapped up in a pretence of greed 

* * *

 

“Ah Mr. Luséne. It is very kind of you to receive me like this.”

“I never say no to a beautiful woman. Especially to a one as legendary as yourself Mrs. McDuck.”

“mm-mm. Please let us have a drink. Can you guess why I’m here?”

“To beg for mercy for your husband’s sake I would think. I’m afraid it won’t succeed. The black knight has already announced that he will rob the money bin and there is nothing that anyone will be able to do.”

“Well, we shall see shall we?”

 

“Where have you been- and what’s that?!”

“Arpin Luséne’s suitcase filled with his most expensive and important possessions. Including all the money he had with him, his passport and other travel documents.”

“!!!!—“

“Poor man just couldn’t hold his drink.”

“Do you understand what a PR nightmare this is going to turn into if the police find out that you robbed Mr Luséne!!?”

“Do you really think that that man is going to tell to the media that he was robbed?”

“Good point.”

“Besides, if the police ask, I will tell them that we were robbed by the black knight while having a pleasant brunch on Mr. Luséne’s hotel room. It was very frightening. The black knight knocked poor Mr. Luséne unconscious. I was severely traumatised by the brutality of it all.”

“Have I told you that I love you lately?”

“Go do your work. This is going to be settled between us thieves. And I love you too.” 

* * *

 

In the pleasantly warm night of Tralla-La’s paradise valley, Goldie and Scrooge were curled around each other, sipping drinks on their balcony, and both feeling awkward.

“Sooo…The locals really do seem to share everything with each other.” Goldie circled the subject she was dreading to address.

“Yes, uhm. They don’t seem to have the institution of marriage at all in their society.” Scrooge was fidgeting in a manner that made it clear that he had also been made aware of the Tralla-La’s people’s peculiar way of handling their love and sex lives. “I was made some uncomfortable offers during the day.” He coughed to hide the embarrassment in his voice. “Donald might be happy, but honestly, the nerve of some people.”

“hmmm.” Goldie hummed in agreement, more to show support than in total agreement. She was used to indecent proposals, and found that the people in Tralla-la at least took no for an answer with good grace. But she also knew that her husband was the type of a person who did not understand the urges that people felt towards casual dalliances, and would feel uncomfortable with such advances made into his direction.

“If they really bother you, forget about chivalry and give them a good whack in the head.” Goldie took a sip of the overtly sweet fruity drink in her hand. “You know, one of the women in the basket weaving society tried to offer her favourite lover to me this evening. I have to say, that took even me by a surprise.”

To her disappointment, Scrooge only lifted his brow at Goldie, and one upped her with a story of his own. “Well, the girl who bakes those sweet cakes just implied to me that she wants a roll in the bed with both of us.”

It was Goldie who ended up spitting out her drink, and after meeting Scrooge’s eyes, they both fell into hysterical, side splitting laughter, leaning into each other and shaking with mirth, comfortable again in their shared amusement. 

* * *

 

“Hmmmh, the beagle boys are attacking your money bin, darling. You should probably do something.”

“It’s _our_ money bin, and I have a business conference in the morning.”

“It’s definitely _your_ money bin at three in the morning, and I took care of the last beagle boy attack, it’s your turn now.”

“I’m pretty sure it was me who handled the last beagle boy attack.”

“No, it was not. And I’m not getting up.”

“uuunngh, fine, fine, but next time I’m going to stay in bed, and you will handle the attack.” 

* * *

 

She looked very beautiful in a way that beauty would have been defined in iron age Finland. Which meant that she had long and thick locks of golden hair, round and symmetrical face, thick rolls of fat decorating her stomach, wide hips, and a general look of a woman who would survive the long winter and could easily give birth to a horde of children.

Much more striking was of course the fact that she had a general look of a water-spirit about her, with the pondweed tangled in her hair and the bluish sheen of her skin.

“And who are you?” Goldie asked her saviour, trying to get used to the feeling of water going in and out of her lungs, trying to trust in the magic of these old Finnish pagan deities.  

“I am the lost love.” She answered to Goldie. “Just like you should be. The Daughters of the North were sitting on the edge of the milky-way, singing to the stars, when they saw you and became distressed. I heard their song of you and wanted to see for myself if they were speaking the truth.”

“And what truth might that be?”

“That you are married.”

“Well.” Goldie huffed quite annoyed. “If the only reason that you dragged me into your watery realm, was to affirm my marital status, I have to say that I am not impressed with the Finnish fairyland.”

The lady stared, and somewhere in her throat, Goldie could feel the water burning.

“That’s not how the stories work. You should be a lost love like me; great men must always have lost loves. That way they can experience the sweetness of love, but never have to lose the sweetness for mundanity of living with your love. You are not what you are supposed to be.”

“What am I supposed to be then?”

“Unattainable.”  

“Said by who. There is no one who says that I would have to be anything, I am my own person!”

“The storyteller might change, but the moral is not supposed to change. I am Aino, the only daughter, the bride of Väinämöinen, who drowned herself on the eve of her wedding. I am the story that teaches the children of men to give freedom to their daughters. I am the one that men think of when they describe beauty. I am the innocence, and I am the sorrow. I have had thousand grooms, I have died thousand deaths, and I do not change. And neither should you. The story of the purest love, of the love that will never be tainted by every-day life. You should live in a world as unchanging as I do.”

“But… I’m not like you. I’m not…whatever you are.”

The Finnish archetype cocked her head in the “you silly mortals” way, “You could be. You could join us, the story beloved in the northern plains. You could join the world of immortals and shine eternally as the most desired and admired star in the northern skies.”

“Are you offering me immortality? Godhood?” Goldie wrapped her arms around herself, which did nothing to alleviate the coldness that being submerged in the frozen water caused. “Why?”

“You and your love did help Väinämöinen forge the new Sampo, and for that your love is being offered the same gift by Väinämöinen himself.” The being extended her hand towards Goldie, dark blue eyes unfathomable.

Goldie stared at the hand and did not for a second believe that Scrooge would choose to leave her behind. And Scrooge would not believe that Goldie would be capable of leaving him behind either, not for something as distasteful as immortality in an unchanging world ruled by the laws of canonical manuscripts.

“Thank you but no thank you. I would be a fool to give my life away now, when it has become everything I could ever have hoped for.”

The only daughter smiled a satisfied smile, and waved her hand. Whatever magic had given Goldie the ability to breathe underwater, was released, and the waters churned and twisted around her, until she believed that she was going to drown.

But she did not drown, and eventually surfaced on the shores of Finland’s coast, the sweet lake water turning into salty one, and the parting words of Väinämöinen’s suicide-bride turning into Donald’s worried voice, as he tried to shake his aunt awake.

 _I’m glad one of us had the opportunity to try something new._ She had said.

A month later the Kalevala-society would get an anonymous donation asking them to support and encourage young writers to create as many new retellings of Kalevala as possible. 

* * *

 

“I just wanted to-“

“I don’t care what you want.”

Matilda’s silence was cold and final at the end of the sentence, and Goldie did not know how to persuade her sister-in-law to listen. She had tried talking to Ludwig, but the Austrian professor had made it clear that he would always take Matilda’s side on this issue. “Somebody has to.” As he had put it. Goldie understood. That was what marriage primary was for. Having each other’s backs in difficult situations.

Scrooge was making even less progress than Goldie, and Donald had already exhausted all of his tricks by getting this family to be in the same castle together. It was looking more and more that any apologies that anyone was willing to utter were spoken a little too late to fix anything.

“I know that I was in the wrong-“

“No, I doubt that you do.” Matilda rose from her chair by the fireplace and determinedly shoved Goldie out of the door. “If you had any comprehension of what you did to us by taking our ancestral home away from us, you would not have taken it in the first place.”

Goldie snatched a hold of the doorframe. “Never mind me, but can’t you at least try to listen to your brother? Doesn’t Scrooge at least deserve a change to earn your forgiveness?”

Matilda’s usually so gentle face stayed stony. She had aged with grace, but the expression of cold loathing made her look like an entirely different than the one Goldie had known all those years ago.

“I will listen to your explanations and justifications when you find the knight Templars’ gold.” Matilda barked out a dry laugh, and then slammed the door on Goldie’s face. There was nothing she could do but let her forehead drop against the wood of the door and let the disappointment trickle down her throat. She couldn’t but miss the atmosphere of when she had last time been in this castle, newly reunited with Scrooge and just getting to know Donald and the triplets. Why was it that running from psychotic con-artist who could turn invisible had been emotionally less exhausting than trying to reconnect with Scrooge’s sister?  

* * *

 

“Oh, Mrs. McDuck, you are back- Oh my! That-? You-? My dear what has happened?!”

“What-? Oh, the bruise! Funny story actually, we were just in South-America, looking for the lost gold mines of the Incas, and just as a side note, please don’t mention the whole affair with Scrooge for at least a week, he gets so very upset seeing treasure slip through his fingers, but anyway, where was I? Yes, There was some trouble with booby traps, the usual you know? Great flying boulders, spears triggered by your steps, blades trying to behead you. I got a bit unlucky with one of the traps, that’s all.”

“Honestly, you McDucks are going to send me to an early grave with worrying.”

“Oh, Miss. Quakerfaster, please. You don’t have to worry about us, it’s not what you are paid to do after all.”

“Believe me, I do a lot of things I am not paid to do.”

“What was that?”

“Nothing, nothing. You have a meeting with the mayor tomorrow morning. Please try to hide the worst of the damage this time. You know already what the poor man was like when he caught you three running around the city hall’s walls last week.”

“That was not our fault, we were gravitionally compromised by a witch.”

“I know, I know. Just try to remember that not everyone has as interesting lives as your family, they need to be eased in slowly.”

* * *

 

The money bin was silent, all of the workers gone home hours ago, and the usually so hectic building was for once peaceful. Only the owner of said building himself was climbing up the stairs to his office, tired after a day spent at the stock market.

The tired figure first noticed that the great door to his sanctuary was slightly ajar, and there was light peeking out from the gap. Opening the heavy door a bit more, he could observe the other person still awake inside the building. She was sprawled over the oceans of cash under her, her silver hair becoming one with the silver coins under her head. Scattered here and there around her were bunch of old scrapbooks.

The heart of the old tycoon, standing over his treasures, made a little flip-flop, that would in any other situation made the owner of said heart worry about age finally catching up to him. Now he only accepted the little flutter in his chest and let his eyes rest on the beautiful sight.

The duck laying on the coins opened her eyes and graced her beloved with a smile. One of the lamps on the ceiling kept flickering slightly. It would need to be changed soon, both ducks observed at the back of their minds, and filed the problem to be handled later.

In a graceful arc, Scrooge McDuck dived into his pool of coins, surfacing soon with the agility of a dolphin, and ending up near his amused wife.

“I still don’t understand how you can do that.”

“It’s a trick.”

“That’s not an answer.” She laughed and settled her head on his chest. He enjoyed a long sniff of her hair, where the scent of silver coins still lingered. “How was your auction?” He asked.

“I might have found one of the lost documents concerning the Nibelung gold.” She answered, running her hand lazily through the sea of coins under them.  

“Oh really?!” A sheen appeared in his eyes, and a high note in his voice, washing out any exhaustion that he had picked up from the stock markets.

“I said might.” She flicked her husband’s whiskers, laughing.

Outside, the moon kept crawling across the sky, and inside one the most secured buildings in the world, a pair of ducks enjoyed their own personal moment of perfection.  

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaaand, its a wrap up. Thank you so much for everyone who has reviewed, favourited and left kudos. This story was a real jump into the dark for me, and sometimes I felt really silly writing it, but this project has been a dream of mine for a long time and the positive feedback has definitely made it worth doing.
> 
> If you want to talk to me, I have a duck-fandom tumblr: https://ankkaneito.tumblr.com/  
> I would love, love, love it if you came to say hi!


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